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1 " Human hearts are full of strife. It's a fallen world, my dears. We can only do our best to establish safe havens where we can. "
― Sarah McCoy , Marilla of Green Gables
2 " The older I get, the more I see the truth. Greatness can be found anywhere. It doesn't need grandeur. There's greatness in the ordinary. Maybe even more than elsewhere. "
3 " There was power in knowledge. Like the gears of a steam engine, the more active knowledge was, the more force it produced. "
4 " History held plenty more examples of the unmarried being happy. Who said a man or a woman had to be a husband or a wife? Maybe they could simply be, unto themselves. "
5 " Tears were misunderstood, she thought, and used inappropriately most often. They were designed as a private response of being. Because sometimes life filled you to the brim and spilled over. Tears were the body's way of cleansing the overflow of emotions, from sorrow to joy and so many others that couldn't be described. "
6 " I have a voice just as much as you do. It’s a choice we make every minute. What truths are important enough to say aloud and what ones are important just to know. That’s the power. You’ve got to be discerning. You can change your mind any time you want, but you can’t take your words back. Not ever. "
7 " The world is too large and too diverse for us to stay rooted in social convention when it no longer strengthens the people for whom it was created. "
8 " Tomorrow was a new day, with no memory or sentiments of yesterday. "
9 " It's our duty to love the poor, the orphaned, the weary and burdened. Matthew 11:28. Love can be its own kind of war. "
10 " Well the end is coming, isn't it? We spend our entire lives running from it. No speaking of it allowed. Fearing it for our loved ones." She shook her head and folded the burp cloth in her hand. "But after all we've seen of the world, I decided I'll get more joy out of the days I have left if I just acknowledge that death is part of life. The leaves on an apple tree blossom yield and fall. No use fretting over the sweetness of the fruit. Got to pick it when it looks ripe and move on. It's the fool who's forlorn over what he imagines he's lost. I'm sure that's in the Gospel somewhere." Even if it wasn't, Rachel would amend the text to her liking. The Word according to Rachel, as some complained. Not Marilla of course. Rachel was her closest friend, so she kept quiet, in Cuthbert fashion. "
11 " Nothing secret about a recipe. It's how you put it together that makes it yours. "
12 " But tomorrow was a new day, with no memory or sentiments of yesterday. How wonderful, she thought. How tragic . "
13 " When the blazing sun is gone, When he nothing shines upon, Then you show your little light, Twinkle, twinkle all the night. "
14 " She’d meant to speak boldly not cruelly. Up until that moment, she hadn’t realized how similar the two could be. "
15 " From the shelter of their porch, she turned to look out over Avonlea: the gulf in the distance roared; the wind was scented with melted icecaps and blew the trees like stalks of kelp; the rain fell faster and faster until it looked as if a veil had been drawn over the island, tinting everything wet gray. She hardly recognized Avonlea as home. From someone else's front door, it looked so different. "
16 " Marilla found the extreme accumulation of any one item to be gluttonous and indicative of a small mind. She'd never understood the popular compulsion to hoard a hundred silver spoons, a hundred porcelain trinket boxes, a hundred stamps, and certainly not a hundred copies of back news. What good did it do a person? When they were dead and gone, it was all fodder for the trash fires. "
17 " Life didn't stop grinding time, even when their mill wheels slowed. "
18 " It was easier than one would have thought to steer clear of a person in a small town like Avonlea. All you had to do was keep busy looking the other way. so long as things stayed the same, nothing changed. "
19 " It’s a choice we make every minute. What truths are important enough to say aloud and what ones are important just to know. That’s the power. You’ve got to be discerning. You can change your mind anytime you want, but you can’t take words back. Not ever. "
20 " And off she went with a crock of marmalade and a bottle of red currant wine tied up in colored tissue paper. She reached the Blairs' as the last shard of blue daylight turned plummy. What had been the storefront window was now lit with candles. A woolly fir tree stood tall in the middle, its needled boughs drooping ever so slightly under the weight of twinkling glass ornaments, candy canes, and small pears balanced on top of them. An army of guests' presents, in every color of paper and ribbon, had been stacked beneath. one of the little Pye boys stole a peppermint off the tree and raced to the corner to devour it. A fiddle and a fife trilled out carols, and from the sway of the crowd inside, Marilla knew they were already dancing. She took in the night: home and friends and all that she cherished. "