Lucy Maud Montgomery: I think it would be worse to expect nothing than...

Some people go through life trying to find out what the world holds for them only to find out too late that it's what they bring to the world that really counts.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

wisdom life people

We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

regret should mistake

Everything that's worth having is some trouble.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

trouble

There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves--so much in men and women, so much in art and literature, so much everywhere in which to delight, and for which to be thankful.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

eye men art

The world looks like something God had just imaged for his own pleasure, doesn't it?

Lucy Maud Montgomery

pleasure looks world

You never know what peace is until you walk on the shores or in the fields or along the winding red roads of Prince Edward Island in a summer twilight when the dew is falling and the old stars are peeping out and the sea keeps its mighty tryst with the little land it loves. You find your soul then. You realize that youth is not a vanished thing but something that dwells forever in the heart.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

stars summer fall

The woods are never solitary — they are full of whispering, beckoning, friendly life. But the sea is a mighty soul, forever moaning of some great, unshareable sorrow, which shuts it up into itself for all eternity. We can never pierce its infinite mystery — we may only wander, awed and spellbound, on the outer fringe of it. The woods call to us with a hundred voices, but the sea has one only — a mighty voice.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

voice sea forever

let's not borrow trouble. The rate of interest is too high.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

rate interest trouble

After all," Anne had said to Marilla once, "I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

simple home believe

Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

green-gables imagine might

there's no use trying to live in other people's opinions. The only thing to do is live in your own.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

use trying people

I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

temptation writing book

Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

air mistake inspirational

She had a way of embroidering life with stars.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

stars way

I shall give life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

return giving believe

I must get out all my ambitions and dust them.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

my-ambition dust ambition

There isn't any such thing as an ordinary life. (92)

Lucy Maud Montgomery

ordinary-life ordinary

Humor is the spiciest condiment in the feast of existence. Laugh at your mistakes but learn from them, joke over your troubles but gather strength from them, make a jest of your difficulties but overcome them.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

overcoming mistake laughing

Nobody is ever too old to dream. And dreams never grow old.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

anne-of-windy-poplars grows dream

Everything is new in the spring. Springs themselves are always so new, too. No spring is ever just like any other spring. It always has something of its own to be its own peculiar sweetness.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

sweetness peculiar spring

I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed.