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| FRANCIS HODGSON BURNETT |
| �Anyone who is kind wants to know when people have been made happy. They care for that more than for being thanked.� [A Little Princess]
�But I suppose there might be good in things, even if we don�t see it.� [A Little Princess] �How is it that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.� (A Little Princess) �I dare say it is rather hard to be a rat. Nobody likes you�.But nobody asked this rat if he wanted to be a rat when he was made. Nobody said, �Wouldn�t you rather be a sparrow?�� [A Little Princess] �Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off�and they are nearly always doing it.� [The Secret Garden] � 'Perhaps you can feel if you can't hear... Perhaps kind thoughts reach people somehow, even through windows and doors and walls. Perhaps you feel a little warm and comforted, and don't know why, when I am standing here in the cold and hoping you will get well and happy again.' � (A Little Princess) �To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet-fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in, you may never get over it as long as you live.� (The Secret Garden) �Whatever comes...cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it. There was Marie Antoinette when she was in prison and her throne was gone and she had only a black gown on, and her hair was white, and they insulted her and called her Widow Capet. She was a great deal more like a queen then than when she was so gay and everything was so grand. I like her best then. Those howling mobs of people did not frighten her. She was stronger than they were, even when they took her head off.� (A Little Princess) � 'When people are insulting you, there is nothing so good for them as not to say a word--just to look at them and think...When you will not fly into a passion people know you are stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wish they hadn't said afterward. There's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in--that's stronger. It's a good thing not to answer your enemies. I scarcely ever do.' � (A Little Princess) |