Anne of Green Gables Quotes

The 8 most famous lines from L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908), each with its speaker and the scene it belongs to. These are the quotes readers underline, copy into essays and put on walls - gathered in one place, explained in a line.

• “I'm so glad I live in a world where there are white frosts.”

  - Anne Shirley. Arriving at Green Gables — the first sample of the habit that runs the whole book: taking delight loudly and treating weather as a personal gift.

• “Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”

  - Anne Shirley. To Marilla after a run of disasters — the optimism Miss Stacy gave her, offered to a woman constitutionally unable to accept the offer.

• “My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.”

  - Anne Shirley. Mid-dramatic-despair over a fallen cake or a dyed head, depending on the chapter — Anne's signature move of grieving small things in large language.

• “A bosom friend — an intimate friend, you know — a really kindred spirit.”

  - Anne Shirley. Defining her ambitions for Diana Barry within minutes of meeting her — the term 'kindred spirit' that readers have used for each other ever since.

• “But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to say them, haven't you?”

  - Anne Shirley. Her defense to Marilla of talking too much — the character's whole theory of language, stated as if it were self-evident.

• “When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. ... Now there is a bend in it.”

  - Anne Shirley. The closing reflection after choosing to stay — the most quoted passage of the book, grief and hope renegotiated in the vocabulary of roads.

• “It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”

  - Anne. Her creed, explained to Marilla early on.

• “Dear old world... you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”

  - Anne. The walk home from the Barrys', halfway to Green Gables.

Why these lines survive

L. M. Montgomery’s sentences earn their fame by compression: each line carries the whole book’s argument in a form you can carry in your pocket. Read in order, the 8 quotes above also sketch the novel’s shape - the world it opens, the pressure it applies, the note it ends on. If you meet them before the book, nothing is spoiled beyond mood; if you meet them after, each one lands like a place you have been.

Quote collectors: pair this page with the Anne of Green Gables quiz to see which lines actually stuck, the book club questions when you want to argue about them, or how long the reread takes - about 6 hours and 56 minutes at an average pace. If the lines did their job and you want more of the same nerve, the books like Anne of Green Gables list is next.

Want the whole shelf’s lines? Our Anne of Green Gables books in order guide lists every book.

How to use a quotes page

Three honest uses. Before reading: skim the first two quotes to taste the prose - if the voice does not pull you, the book will not either. During: mark which quote you actually reach in the text, because the distance between famous line and lived scene is where a book keeps its secrets. After: pick the one quote you would defend at dinner and check it against the discussion questions - a quote you can argue about is a quote you understood. What a quotes page is not for is replacing the book; five lines of L. M. Montgomery are an invitation, not a summary.

More quote collections

Pride and Prejudice quotes, Jane Eyre quotes, Little Women quotes, The Catcher in the Rye quotes - or browse quotes from all 133 classics. Then see which of them stuck on the original book quiz.

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