Reading Challenge: Anne of the Island
Welcome to the blog post for Anne of the Island book 3 of the Anne of the Green Gables book series reading challenge!
This book follows Anne to college through the ups & downs of her romantic entanglements, through the joys of setting up housekeeping for the first time with her dear chums, & her first great writing attempt.
I love the quote above, it has such beautiful autumn descriptions.
“I’ll be so lonesome when you go,” moaned Diana for the hundredth time. “And to think you go next week!”
“But we’re together still,” said Anne cheerily. “We mustn’t let next week rob us of this week’s joy.”
“I think we’ll like Kingsport,” said Gilbert...
... “I wonder if it will be-can be-any more beautiful than this,” murmured Anne, looking around her with the loving, enraptured eyes of those to whom “home” must always be the loveliest spot in the world, no matter what fairer lands may lie under alien stars.”
“Gilbert suddenly laid his hand over the slender white one lying on the rail of the bridge. His hazel eyes deepened into darkness, his still boyish lips opened to say something of the dream and hope that thrilled his soul. But Anne snatched her hand away and turned quickly. The spell of the dusk was broken for her.”
“I think saying my prayers is great fun. But it won’t be as good fun saying them alone as saying them to you.”
“After Davey had gone to bed Anne wandered down to Victoria Island and sat there alone, curtained with fine-spun, moonlit gloom, while the water laughed around her in a duet of brook and wind. Anne had always loved that brook. Many a dream had she spun over its sparkling water in days gone by. She forgot lovelorn youths, and the cayenne speeches of malicious neighbors, and all the problems of her girlish existence.
In imagination she sailed over storied seas that wash the distant shining shores of “faery lands forlorn,” where lost Atlantis and Elysium lie, with the evening star for pilot, to the land of Hearts Desire. And she was richer in those dreams than in realities; for things seen pass away, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
“You are the first Avonlea girl who has ever gone to college; and you know that all pioneers are considered to be afflicted with moonstruck madness.”
“They started gaily off. Anne, remembering the unpleasantness of the preceding evening, was very nice to Gilbert...
...Mrs. Lynde and Marilla watched them from the kitchen window.
“That’ll be a match someday,” Mrs. Lynde said approvingly.”
What bewitching words of her childhood & her past in the above quote.
“Past a dour plantation of gnarled spruces and a maple fringed, sun-warm valley they found the “something” Gilbert was looking for.
“Ah, here it is,” he said with satisfaction.
“An apple tree-and away back here!” exclaimed Anne delightedly.
“Yes, a veritable apple bearing apple tree, too, here in the very midst of pines and beeches, a mile away from any orchard. I was here one day last spring and found it, all white with blossom. So, I resolved I’d come again in the fall and see if it had been apples. See, it’s loaded. They look good, too-tawney as russets but with a dusky red cheek. Most wild seedlings are green and uninviting.”
“I suppose it sprang years ago from some chance-sown seed,” said Anne dreamily. And how it has grown and flourished and held its own here all alone among aliens, the brave determined thing!”
“Gilbert was looking at Anne, as she walked along. In her light dress, with her slender delicacy, she made him think of a white iris. “I wonder if I can ever make her care for me,” he thought with a pang of self-distrust.”
“She was leaving the home that was so dear to her, and something told her that she was leaving it forever, save as a holiday refuge. Things would never be the same again; coming back for vacations would not be living there. And oh, how dear and beloved everything was-that little white porch room, sacred to the dreams of girlhood, the old Snow Queen at the window, the brook in the hollow, the Dryad’s Bubble, the Haunted Wood, and Lover’s Lane-all the thousand and one dear spots where memories of old years bided. Could she ever be really happy anywhere else?”
I feel I’m just as sentimental about everything as Anne is. I loathe to leave or lose any of my dear special places. Are you like that?
“They would exult in saying ‘I told you so,’ and be convinced it was the beginning of the end. Whereas it is just the end of the beginning.”
As Priscilla states in the above quote, Anne sounds a bit more Anneish even through her hopeless homesickness. What a good line, …it is just the end of the beginning.
“Instantly she sprang up and came forward with outstretched hand and a gay, friendly smile in which there seemed not a shadow of either shyness or burdened conscience...
... “We thought you were too shy,” said Anne.
“No, no, dear. Shyness isn’t among the many failings-or virtues-of Philippa Gordan-Phil for short. Do call me Phil right off.”
“To her, the happiest moments in each week were those in which letters came from home. It was not until she had got her first letters that she began to think she could ever like Kingsport or feel at home there. Before they came, Avonlea had seemed thousands of miles away; those letters brought it near and linked the old life to the new so closely that they began to seem one and the same, instead of two hopelessly segregated existences.”
“They all sat down in the little pavilion to watch an autumn sunset of deep red fire and pallid gold. To their left lay Kingsport, its roofs and spires dim in their shroud of violet smoke. To their right lay the harbor, taking on tints of rose and copper as it stretched out into the sunset. Before them the water shimmered, satin smooth and silver gray, and beyond, clean shaven William’s Island loomed out of the mist, guarding the town like a sturdy bulldog. Its lighthouse beacon flared through the mist like a baleful star, and was answered by another in the far horizon.”
“There’s a perfectly killing little place I want to show you, Anne. It wasn’t built by a millionaire. It’s the first place after you leave the park, and must have grown while Spofford Avenue was still a country road. It did grow-it wasn’t built! I don’t care for the houses on the Avenue. They’re too brand new and plate glassy. But this little spot is a dream-and its name-but wait till you see it.”
They saw it as they walked up the pine-fringed hill from the park. Just on the crest, where Spofford Avenue petered out into a plain road, was a little white frame house with groups of pines on either side of it, stretching their arms protectingly over its low roof. It was covered with red and gold vines, through which its green shuttered windows peeped. Before it was a tiny garden, surrounded by a low stone wall. October though it was, the garden was still very sweet with dear, old-fashioned, unworldly flowers and shrubs-sweet may, southern-wood, lemon verbena, alyssum, petunias, marigolds, and chrysanthemums. A tiny brick wall, in herring-bone pattern, led from a gate to the front porch. The whole place might have been transplanted from some remote country village...”
“And there’s an apple orchard behind the house in place of a back yard-you’ll see it when we get a little past-a real apple orchard on Spofford Avenue!
I’m going to dream about ‘Patty’s Place’ tonight,” said Anne “Why, I feel as if I belonged to it...”
I would love to see Patty’s Place in real life, it sounds so lovely.
“...they drove home together under silent, star-sown depths of sky. Green Gables had a very festal appearance as they drove up the lane. There was a light in every window, the glow breaking out through the darkness like flame-red blossoms swung against the dark background of the Haunted Wood. And in the yard was a brave bonfire with two gay little figures dancing around it, one of which gave a unearthly yell as the buggy turned in under the poplars.
Davey means that for an Indian war-whoop,” said Diana. “Mr. Harrisons hired boy taught it to him, and he’s been practicing it up to welcome you with. Mrs. Lynde says it has worn her nerves to a frazzle. He creeps up behind her, you know, and then lets go. He was determined to have a bonfire for you, too. He’s been piling up dry branches for a fortnight and pestering Marilla to be let pour some kerosene oil over it before setting it on fire. I guess she did, by the smell, though Mrs. Lynde said up to the last that Davey would blow himself and everybody else up if he was let.”
Anne was out of the buggy by this time, and Davey was rapturously hugging her knees, while even Dora was clinging to her hand.
“Isn’t that a bully bonfire, Anne? Just let me show you how to poke it-see the sparks? I did it for you, Anne, ‘cause I was glad you were coming home.”
“The kitchen door opened and Marilla’s spare form darkened against the inner light. She preferred to meet Anne in the shadows, for she was horribly afraid that she was going to cry with joy- she, stern, repressed Marilla, who thought all display of deep emotion unseemly. Mrs. Lynde was behind her, sonsy, kindly, matronly, as of yore. The love that Anne had told Phil was waiting for her surrounded her and enfolded her with its blessing and its sweetness. Nothing after all, could compare with old ties, old friends, and old Green Gables! How starry Anne’s eyes were as they sat down to the loaded supper table, how pink her cheeks, how silver-clear her laughter! And Diana was going to stay all night, too. How like the dear old times it was! And the rose-bud tea-set graced the table! With Marilla the force of nature could no further go.”
How delightful was Anne’s home coming.
“The perfume of Miss Lavendar’s rose bowl still filled the air. It was hardly possible to not believe that Miss Lavendar would not come tripping in presently, with her brown eyes a-star with welcome, and Charlotta the Fourth, blue of bow and wide of smile, would not pop through the door. Paul, too, seemed hovering around, with his fairy fancies.
“It really makes me feel a little bit like a ghost revisiting the old times glimpses of the moon,” laughed Anne. “Let’s go out and see if the echos are at home. Bring the old horn. It is still behind the kitchen door.”
The echos were at home, over the white river, as silver-clear and multitudinous as ever; and when they had ceased to answer the girls locked up Echo Lodge again and went away in the perfect half hour that follows the rose and saffron of a winter sunset.”
That is the funny thing about revisiting places that memories lurk, the smells about them are their own memories.
“Anne knew quite well wherein the sting consisted, though she did not put into words. She had had her secret dreams of the first time some one should ask her the great question. And it had, in those dreams, always been very romantic and beautiful: and the “some one” was to be very handsome and dark-eyed and distinguished-looking and eloquent, whether he were Prince Charming to be enraptured with “yes,” or one to whom a regretful, beautifully worded, but hopeless refusal must be given. If the latter, the refusal was to be expressed so delicately that it would be next best thing to acceptance, and he would go away, after kissing her hand, assuring her of his unalterable, lifelong devotion. And it would always be a beautiful memory, to be proud of and a little sad about, also.
And now, this thrilling experience had turned out to be merely grotesque. Billy Andrews had got his sister to propose for him because his father had given him the upper farm; and if Anne wouldn’t “have him” Nettie Blewett would. There was romance for you, with a vengeance! Anne laughed -and then sighed. ”
Billy Andrew’s infamous rather Jane’s proposal to Anne, such a disagreeable first proposal.
“Spring is singing in my blood today, and the lure of April is abroad on the air. I’m seeing visions and dreaming dreams, Pris. That’s because the wind is from the west. I do love the west wind. It sings of hope and gladness, doesn’t it?”
I know that spring feeling so well, the world is alive again!
“There are so many things I want to do. I want to sit on the back porch steps and feel the breeze blowing down over Mr. Harrison’s fields. I want to hunt ferns in the Haunted Wood and gather violets in Violet Vale. Do you remember the day of our golden picnic, Priscilla? I want to hear the frogs singing and the poplars whispering.”
I love the above quote; I reminisce of places in certain seasons closing my eyes & imagining I’m there.
I love this part!
“...each rocked placidly and looked at the girls without speaking; and just behind each sat a large white china dog, with round green spots all over it, a green nose and green ears. Those dogs captured Anne’s fancy on the spot; they seemed like the twin guardian deities of Patty’s Place.” pg.70...
...A pleased expression came into Miss Patty’s face. “I think a great deal of those dogs,” she said proudly. “They are over a hundred years old, and they have sat on either side of this fireplace ever since my brother Aaron brought them back from London fifty years ago. pg.72...
... “Their names are Gog and Magog. Gog looks to the right and Magog to the left. pg.73...”
“Miss Patty and Miss Maria are hardly such stuff as dreams are made of,” laughed Anne. “Can you fancy them ‘glob-trotting’-especially in those shawls and caps?...
... “but I know they’ll take their knitting with them everywhere. They simply couldn’t be parted from it. They will walk about Westminster Abbey and knit, I feel sure. ”
What a picture the above quote paints.
“...I believe we will all get on beautifully in Patty’s Place.”
Anne’s imaginings are so lovely…
“Do you think we could find all our yesterdays there, Diana-all our old springs and blossoms? The beds of flowers that Paul saw there are the roses that have bloomed for us in the past?”
“What are dreaming of, Anne?”
The two girls were loitering one evening in a fairy hollow of the brook. Ferns nodded in it, and little grasses were green, and wild pears hung finely-scented, white curtains around it. Anne roused herself from her reverie with a happy sigh.
“I was thinking out my story, Diana.”
“Oh, have you really begun it? cried Diana, all alight with eager interest in a moment.
“Yes, I have only a few pages written, but I have it all pretty well thought out.”
“Cut out all those flowery passages,” he said unfeelingly...
... “and you shouldn’t have laid the scene among rich people. What do you know of them? Why didn’t you lay it right here in Avonlea-changing the name, of course, or else Mrs. Rachel Lynde would probably think she was the heroine.”
“Oh, that would never have done,” protested Anne. “Avonlea is the dearest place in the world, but it isn’t quite romantic enough for the scene of a story.”
“I daresay there’s been many a romance in Avonlea-and many a tragedy, too,” said Mr. Harrison drily. “But your folks ain’t like real folks anywhere. They talk too much and use too high-flown language. There’s one place where that Dalrymple chap talks even on for two pages, and never lets the girl get a word in edgewise. If he’d done that in real life she’d have pitched him.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Anne flatly. In her secret soul she thought that the beautiful, poetical things said to Averil would win any girls heart completely...
... “Perceval hadn’t time for anything but mooning.”
“Mooning.” That was even worse than “pitching!”
I prefer Gilbert to say these lines like in the 1987 movie version, Mr. Harrison is second best though.
“If it is a success you’ll see it when it is published, Gilbert, but if it is a failure nobody shall ever see it.”
“Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening had changed something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different-something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth.”
“I don’t understand,” said Anne, blankly.
Diana clapped her hands.
“Oh, I knew it would win the prize-I was sure of it. I sent your story into the competition, Anne...
...Anne instantly manufactured a smile and put it on.
Of course I couldn’t be anything but pleased over your unselfish wish to give me pleasure,” she said slowly. “But you know-I’m so amazed-I can’t realize it -and I don’t understand. There wasn’t a word in my story about-about-“ Anne choked a little over the word-“baking-powder.”
“Oh, I put that in,” said Diana, reassured. “It was as easy as wink-and of course my experience in our old Story Club helped me. You know the scene where Averil makes the cake? Well, I just stated that she used the Rollings Reliable in it, and that was why it turned out so well; and then, in the last paragraph, where Perceval clasps Averil in his arms and says, ‘Sweetheart, the beautiful coming years will bring us the fulfilment of our home of dreams,’ I added, ‘in which we will never use any baking powder except Rollings Reliable.’”
“Oh,” gasped poor Anne, as if someone had dashed cold water on her.
“And you’ve won the twenty-five dollars,” continued Diana jubilantly. “Why, I heard Prisilla say once that the Canadian Woman only pays five dollars for a story!”
Anne held out the hateful pink slip in shaking fingers.
“I can’t take it-it’s yours by right, Diana. You sent the story in and made the alterations. I-I would certainly never have sent it. So you must take the check.”
“I’d like to see myself,” said Diana scornfully.
“Why, what I did wasn’t any trouble. The honor of being a friend of the prize-winner is enough for me.”
This is such a funny part, one of my favorites that the Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel 1987 movie captured too.
“Anne suddenly bent forward, put her arms about Diana, and kissed her cheek. “I think you are the sweetest and truest friend in the world, Diana,” she said, with a little tremble in her voice, “and I assure you I appreciate the motive of what you’ve done.”
Oh, the dramatics of Anne in the above quote! But I love her for it.
What a cozy picture the following quotes bring to mind. I love cold days when my cat Davey comes up to me purring, slowly creeps up & curls up in my lap.
“It’s the homiest spot I ever saw-it’s homier than home,” avowed Philippa Gordon, looking about her with delighted eyes. They were all assembled at twilight in the big living-room at Patty’s Place-Anne and Priscilla, Phil and Stella, Aunt Jamesina, Rusty, Joseph, the Sarah-Cat, and Gog and Magog. The firelight shadows were dancing over the walls; the cats were purring; and a huge bowl of hothouse chrysanthemums, sent to Phil by one of the victims, shone through the golden gloom like creamy moons.
It was three weeks since they had considered themselves settled, and already all believed the experiment would be a success.”
It is so nice to see Phil start to notice the simple joys around her that she has been missing all her frivolous life.
“Anne, despite her love and loyalty to Green Gables, could not help thinking longingly of Patty’s Place, its cosy open fire, Aunt Jamesina mirthful eyes, the three cats, the merry chatter of the girls, the pleasantness of Friday evenings when college friends dropped in to talk of grave and gay.”
“Gilbert, to be sure, was still faithful, and waded up to Green Gables every possible evening. But Gilbert’s visits were not what they once were. Anne almost dreaded them. It was very disconcerting to look up in the midst of a sudden silence and find Gilbert’s hazel eyes fixed upon her with a quite unmistakable expression in their grave depths; and it was still more disconcerting to find herself blushing hotly and uncomfortably under his gaze just as if- just as if-well, it was very embarrassing.”
“I hope Gilbert won’t court you that long. When are you going to be married, Anne? Mrs. Lynde says it’s a sure thing.”
“Mrs. Lynde is a-“ began Anne hotly; then stopped.
“Awful old gossip,” completed Davey calmly. “That’s what every one calls her. But is it a sure thing, Anne? I want to know.”
Leave it to Davey to bring up uncomfortable topics in his always matter a fact way.
“The teens are such a nice part of life. I’m glad I’ve never gone out of them myself.”
Anne laughed.
“You never will, Aunty. You’ll be eighteen when you should be a hundred. Yes, I’m sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacey told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don’t feel that it’s what it should be. It’s full of flaws.”
“So’s everybody’s,” said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. “Mine’s cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacey likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or ‘tother, and would go on developing in that line. Don’t worry over it, Anne. Do your duty by God and your neighbor and yourself, and have a good time. That’s my philosophy and its alway’s worked pretty well.”
I love Aunt Jamesina!
“This has been a dull, prosy day,” yawned Phil...”
... “It has been a prosy day for us,” she said thoughtfully, “but to some people it has been a wonderful day. Some one has been rapturously happy in it. Perhaps a great deed has been done somewhere today-or a great poem written-or a great man born. And some heart has been broken, Phil.”
Anne has such interesting thoughts…
“...Anne betook herself to the orchard in company with Rusty. It was a moist, pleasantly-odorous night in early spring. The snow was not quite all gone from the park; a little dingy bank of it yet lay under the pines of the harbor road, screened from the influence of April suns. It kept the harbor road muddy, and chilled the evening air...
...Anne was sitting on the big gray boulder in the orchard looking at the poem of a bare, birchen bough hanging against the pale red sunset with the very perfection of grace.”
“Gilbert sat down beside her on the boulder and held out his Mayflowers.
“Don’t these remind you of home and our old schoolday picnics, Anne?”
Anne took them and buried her face in them.
“I’m in Mr. Silas Sloane’s barrens this very minute,” she said rapturously. ”
“Never mind Phil and the violets just now, Anne,” said Gilbert quietly, taking her hand in a clasp from which she could not free it. “There is something I want to say to you.”
“Oh, don’t say it,” cried Anne, pleadingly.
“Don’t-please, Gilbert.”
“I must. Things can’t go on like this any longer. Anne, I love you. You know I do. I-I can’t tell you how much. Will you promise me that some day you’ll be my wife?”
“I-I can’t,” said Anne miserably. “Oh, Gilbert-you-you’ve spoiled everything.”
“Don’t you care for me at all?” Gilbert asked after a very dreadful pause, during which Anne had not dared look up.
“Not-not in that way. I do care a great deal for you as a friend. But I don’t love you, Gilbert. ”
Oh Anne, you are so wrong.
“I don’t care for any one like that-and I like you better than anybody else in the world, Gilbert. ”
“My world has tumbled into pieces. I want to reconstruct it.
“Without any Gilbert in it?” said Phil, going.
A world without any Gilbert in it! Anne repeated the words drearily.”
This is one my favorite parts. It is so special to see Anne visit her birthplace, that dear yellow house.
“Anne went up the narrow stairs and into that little east room with a full heart. It was as a shrine to her. Here her mother had dreamed the exquisite, happy dreams of anticipated motherhood; here that red sunrise light had fallen over them both in the sacred hour of birth; here her mother had died. Anne looked about her reverently, her eyes dim with tears. It was for her one of the jeweled hours of life that gleam out radiantly forever in memory. ”
“There were not many-only a dozen in all-for Walter and Bertha Shirley had not been often separated during their courtship. The letters were yellow and faded and dim, blurred with the touch of passing years. No profound words of wisdom were traced on the stained and wrinkled pages, but only lines of love and trust. The sweetness of forgotten things clung to them-the far-off, fond imaginings of those long-dead lovers. Bertha Shirley had possessed the gift of writing letters which embodied the charming personality of the writer in words and thoughts that retained their beauty and fragrance after a lapse of time. The letters were tender, intimate, sacred. To Anne, the sweetest of all was one written after her birth to the father on a brief absence. It was full of a proud young mother’s accounts of “baby”-her cleverness, her brightness, her thousand sweetnesses. “I love her best when she is asleep and better still when she is awake,” Bertha Shirley had written in the postscript. Probably it was the last sentence she had ever penned.”
“The firelight shadows were dancing over the kitchen walls at Green Gables, for the spring evening was chilly; through the open east window drifted in the subtly sweet voices of the night.”
“ Yet Marilla had changed but little in the past nine years...
...But her expression was very different; the something about the mouth which had hinted at a sense of humor had developed wonderfully; her eyes were gentler and milder, her smile more frequent and tender.”
“And oh! I’ve had such a lovely walk in the May twilight; I stopped by the barrens and picked these Mayflowers; I came through Violet-Vale; it’s just a big bowlful of violets now-the dear, sky-tinted things. Smell them, Marilla-drink them in.”
Their relationship is so beautiful! I can’t help picturing Megan Follows & Colleen Dewhurst from the 1987 movie.
I love the above quote!
“Echo Lodge was the scene of gaieties once more, and the echos over the river were kept busy mimicking the laughter that rang in the old garden behind the spruces.”
“He and Anne had delightful rambles to wood and field and shore. Never were there two more thoroughly “kindred spirits.”
The above quote is so true. When you are little summer is endless & now it is gone in a blink of an eye.
“I wonder why everybody seems to think I ought to marry Gilbert Blythe,” said Anne petulantly. “Because you were made and meant for each other, Anne-that is why. You needn’t toss that young head of yours. It’s a fact.”
Thank you, Miss. Lavendar, for speaking the truth.
“His voice was low and reverent. I thought that he would do his work and do it well and nobly; and happy the woman fitted by nature and training to help him do it. She would be no feather, blown about by every fickle wind of fancy. She would always know what hat to put on. Probably she would have only one. Ministers never have much money. But she wouldn’t mind having one hat or none at all, because she would have Jonas. “Anne Shirley, don’t you dare to say or hint or think that I’ve fallen in love with Mr. Blake.”...
... “P.S. It is impossible-but I’m afraid it’s true. I’m happy and wretched and scared. He can never care for me, I know. Do you think I could ever develop into a passable minister’s wife, Anne? And would they expect me to lead in prayer? P.G.”
“Pardon me-may I offer you the shelter of my umbrella?”
Anne looked up. Tall and handsome and distinguished-looking-dark, melancholy, inscrutable eyes-melting, musical, sympathetic voice-yes, the very hero of her dreams stood before her in the flesh. He could not have more closely resembled her ideal if he had been made to order ”
I can see how Anne got swept away by the embodiment of her ideals, but Roy is not Gilbert.
“Oh!” Phil peered curiously at Anne. “And is that exceedingly commonplace incident any reason why he should send us long-stemmed roses by the dozen, with a very sentimental rhyme? Or why we should blush a divinest rosy-red when we look at his card? Anne, thy face betrayeth thee.”...
...But she lay long awake that night, nor did she wish for sleep. Her waking fancies were more alluring than any vision of dreamland. Had the real Prince come at last? Recalling those glorious dark eyes which had gazed so deeply into her own, Anne was very strongly inclined to think he had.”
“There is a man in Bolingbroke who lisps and always testifies in prayer-meeting. He says, ‘If you can’t thine like an electric thtar thine like a candlethstick.’ I’ll be Jo’s little candlestick.”
I had to add the above quote since it is a line Olivia Dale says in Road to Avonlea. It is always so interesting to see the parts Kevin Sullivan’s team from Sullivan Entertainment took as inspiration for the series.
“I wonder what it would be like to live in a world it was always June,” said Anne, as she came through the spice and bloom of
the twilit orchard...”
I adore the above quote, Anne is so funny. Wicked as in calling you carrots & pulling your hair?
“After all, the only real roses are the pink ones,” said Anne, as she tied white ribbon around Diana’s bouquet in the westward-looking gable at Orchard Slope. “They are the flowers of love and faith...
...It’s all pretty much as I used to imagine it long ago, when I wept over your inevitable marriage and our consequent parting,” she laughed. “You are the bride of my dreams, Diana, with the ‘lovely misty veil’; and I am your bridesmaid.”
“Something of their old comradeship had returned during the informal mirth of the evening. Oh, it was nice to be walking over that well-known road with Gilbert again!
The night was so very still that one should have been able to hear the whisper of roses in blossom-the laughter of daisies-the piping of grasses-many sweet sounds, all tangled up together. The beauty of the moonlight on familiar fields irradiated the world. “Can’t we take a ramble up Lovers’ Lane before you go in?” asked Gilbert as they crossed the bridge over the Lake of Shining Waters, in which the moon lay like a great, drowned blossom of gold. Anne assented readily. Lovers’ Lane was a veritable path in a fairyland that night-a shimmering, mysterious place, full of wizardry in the white-woven enchantment of moonlight.”
Such a beautiful thought.
“I begin to feel life is worth living as long as there’s laugh in it.”
The above quote is one my favorites.
“Anne glanced over the other manuscript and recalled the old days at Avonlea school when the members of the Story Club, sitting under the spruce trees or down among the ferns by the brook, had written them. What fun they had had! How the sunshine and mirth of those olden summers returned as she read. Not all the glory that was Greece or the grandeur that was Rome could weave such wizardry as those funny, tearful tales of the Story Club. ”
“Annes eyes shone all that day; literary ambitions sprouted and budded in her brain...”
“...took from her trunk the small box that had come to Green Gables on Christmas day. In it was a thread-like gold chain with a tiny pink enamel heart as a pendant. On the accompanying card was written, “With all good wishes from your old chum, Gilbert.” Anne, laughing over the memory the enamel heart conjured up the fatal day when Gilbert called her “Carrots” and vainly tried to make peace with a pink candy heart...
...Tonight she fastened it about her white throat with a dreamy smile.”
Anne can’t help, but love Gilbert.
“What do you mean? he stammered.
“I mean that I can’t marry you,” repeated Anne desperately. “I thought I could-but I can’t. ”
Finally, Anne realizes she doesn’t love Roy Gardner.
“Before he came I wanted a girl, so that I could call her Anne,” said Diana. “But now that little Fred is here I wouldn’t exchange him for a million girls.”
“Say, Anne, did you know Gilbert Blythe is dying?”
Anne stood quite silent and motionless, looking at Davey. Her face had gone so white that Marilla thought she was going to faint. “Davey hold your tongue,” said Mrs. Rachel angrily. Anne don’t look like that-don’t look like that! We didn’t mean to tell you so suddenly.
“Is-it-true?” asked Anne in a voice that was not hers. ”
“Long after Pacifique’s gay whistle faded into the phantom of music and then into silence far up under the maples of Lover’s Lane Anne stood under the willows, tasting the poignant sweetness of life when some great dread has been removed from it. The morning was a cup filled with mist and glamor. In the corner near her was a rich surprise of new-blown, crystal-dewed roses. The trills and trickles of song from the birds in the big tree above her seemed in perfect accord with her mood. A sentence from a very old, very true, very wonderful Book came to her lips, “Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning.”
“The rose of love made the blossom of friendship pale and scentless by contrast.”
The best part of the book at last they have found the love they seeked.
“Let’s resolve to keep this day sacred to perfect beauty all our lives for the gift it has given us.”
“It’s the birthday of our happiness,” said Anne softly. “I’ve always loved this old garden of Hester Gray’s, and now it will be dearer than ever.”
“But I’ll have to ask you to wait a long time, Anne,” said Gilbert sadly. “It will be three years before I’ll finish my medical course. And even then there will be no diamond sunbursts and marble halls.”
Anne laughed.
“I don’t want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want you.”
Thanks for reading along with me!
Please share your favorite parts and quotes down in the comments📚💙
Check out my Anne of the Island Book Aesthetic Instagram Reel HERE!
