Frances Hodgson Burnett quotes

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.

— Spoken by a character · XI. RAM DASS

If Nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that--warm things, kind things, sweet things,--help and comfort and laughter,--and sometimes gay, kind laughter is the best help of all.

Everything's a story. You are a story--I am a story.

— Sara · IX. MELCHISEDEC

How it is 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.

"Sometimes I do pretend I am a princess. I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one."

— Spoken by a character · VI. THE DIAMOND-MINES

"I know you by heart. You are inside my heart."

— Spoken by a character · I. SARA

What you have to do with your mind, when your body is miserable, is to make it think of something else.

— Spoken by a character · XIII. ONE OF THE POPULACE

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.

— Sara · X. THE INDIAN GENTLEMAN

Some very odd things happen in this world sometimes.

Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage.

At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done—then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.

“Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.”

— Spoken by a character · XXVII. IN THE GARDEN

“Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world,” he said wisely one day, “but people don’t know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment.”

— Spoken by a character · XXIII. MAGIC

I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us—like electricity and horses and steam.

— Spoken by a character · XXIII. MAGIC

And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.

“Might I,” quavered Mary, “might I have a bit of earth?”

— Spoken by a character · XII. “MIGHT I HAVE A BIT OF EARTH?”

Mother says as th’ two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way—or always to have it.

— Martha · XVIII. “THA’ MUNNOT WASTE NO TIME”

Nothing in the world is quite as adorably lovely as a robin when he shows off—and they are nearly always doing it.

It made her think that it was curious how much nicer a person looked when he smiled. She had not thought of it before.

“The rain is as contrary as I ever was,” she said. “It came because it knew I did not want it.”

— Spoken by a character · XIII. “I AM COLIN”