Eleanor H. Porter Quotes

“To think that now never again would that smiling face be seen on their streets—never again would that cheery little voice proclaim the gladness of some everyday experience! It seemed unbelievable, impossible, cruel.”

“See here, why don’t you find some one your own age to talk to?”

“It must be that there are some things that ‘tisn’t right to play the game on—and I’m sure funerals is one of them. There’s nothing in a funeral to be glad about.”

“Miss Polly looked at the forlorn little gray bunch of neglected misery in Pollyanna’s arms, and shivered: Miss Polly did not care for cats—not even pretty, healthy, clean ones.”

“I’ve got something besides the weather to think of. I don’t know whether the sun shines or not.”

“Nancy, WILL you tell me what this absurd ‘game’ is that the whole town seems to be babbling about? And what, please, has my niece to do with it? WHY does everybody, from Milly Snow to Mrs. Tom Payson, send word to her that they’re ‘playing it’? As near as I can judge, half the town are putting on blue ribbons, or stopping family quarrels, or learning to like something they never liked before, and all because of Pollyanna.”

“Little girl, I’m thinking that one of the very gladdest jobs you ever did has been done to-day.”

“I remember you. ANYbody’d remember you, I guess, if they saw you once.”

“You see, when you’re hunting for the glad things, you sort of forget the other kind.”

“Don’t plunge into the middle of it as you did before—and mix everything all up!”

“With heaps of love to everybody, ‘POLLYANNA.‘”

“Miss Polly did not usually make hurried movements; she specially prided herself on her repose of manner.”

“We remembered all the things she’d said to us, we thought if she could only know what she HAD done for us, that it would HELP, you know, in her own case, about the game, because she could be glad—that is, a little glad.”

“There were times, indeed, when the vigor she put into her work was more of a relief to her feelings than it was an ardor to efface dirt.”

“I am a good woman, I hope; and I know my duty.”

“There’s no pleasin’ her, nohow, no matter how you try!”

“Just breathing isn’t living!”

“I’M a-goin’ ter do it!”

“I should think SOMEBODY might give me a new nightdress—instead of lamb broth, for a change!”

“I just can’t make myself understand that God and the angels needed my father more than I did.”