All quotes

You are like a chestnut burr, prickly outside, but silky-soft within, and a sweet kernal, if one can only get at it. Love will make you show your heart one day, and then the rough burr will fall off.

There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I’m such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn’t be half so interesting.

Well, I don’t want to be anyone but myself, even if I go uncomforted by diamonds all my life

I’m not a bit changed--not really. I’m only just pruned down and branched out. The real me--back here--is just the same.

Life is a verb. We try our best. We don’t always do our best.

Life’s not easy…don’t try and make it that way. It’s not fair, it never was, it isn’t now, it won’t ever be.

We give thanks for these things and that gratitude reciprocates, creating more to be thankful for. It’s simple, and it works.

It also makes for contentedness, when things happen against our wish, not to overlook our many advantages and comforts, but by looking at both good and bad to feel that the good preponderate.

Let us cleanse therefore the fountain of contentedness, which is within us, that so external things may turn out for our good, through our putting the best face on them.

the body is weighed down by the burden of what presses on it, but the soul often adds to the real load a burden of its own

the sensible make their life pleasanter and more endurable by mitigating their sorrows with the consideration of their blessings, while most people, like sieves, let the worst things stick to them while the best pass through

If I feel overshadowed and outdone by great neighbors, I can yet love; I can still receive; and he that loveth maketh his own the grandeur he loves.

Let my soul become enlarged; I am not enough; I am little and contemptible.

There is no royal road to the control of the brain.

In that category before anything else comes old age, to which all wish to attain, and at which all grumble when attained.

At times I would rise up, a flash of energetic freedom would dart through my soul, accompanied with a faint beam of hope, that flickered for a moment, and then vanished.

To admit that this picture has its shades is but to say that it is still the condition of men upon earth.

Overlooking partial and temporary evils as inseparable from the practical operation of all human institutions, and looking only to the general result, every patriot has reason to be satisfied.

If happiness is what you’re after, then you are going to be let down frequently and be unhappy much of your time.

Noble disappointment, noble self-denial, are not to be admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring bitterness.

Now dost thou resolve to avoid a fault, and within an hour thou behavest thyself as if thou hadst never resolved at all.