Have you ever been asked which fictional character you're most like? I have, and I ask it of my students each year. It's a fun and intriguing question, and I always have a ready answer: Anne of Green Gables. Anne is everything that I see in myself and everything that I would like to see. She is a spunky, red-headed schoolteacher who is extremely imaginative, sensitive, and loves her friends and family above all else. Reading through the series of 8 books by Lucy Maud Montgomery is always inspiring to me because Anne is full of such positive, life-affirming wisdom. Although these books are often called children's books, I find so much food for thought in them, even as an adult who has read them many times. I strongly believe that the best children's literature can be read and enjoyed by all ages. After each of my three visits to Prince Edward Island I have become even more enamored with Anne and her turn-of-the-century way of life. I encourage everyone who wants to celebrate life and love and fall and teaching and spring and nature to embrace the story of Anne as I have.The following are quotes from the series that particularly resonate with me.
"Isn't it a splendid thing that there are mornings?"
"There's such a difference between saying a thing yourself and hearing other people say it. . . . You may know a thing is so, but you can't help hoping other people don't quite think it is."
"It's lovely to be going home and know it's home."
"I am well in body although considerably up rumpled in spirit."
"Looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them."
"Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world."
"Is it very wicked of me . . . to feel encouraged when I hear that other people have been bad and mischievous?"
"That's the worst of growing up . . . the things you wanted so much when you were a child don't seem half so wonderful to you when you get them."
"Her dreams kept pace with her growth."
"It's delightful to have ambitions. I'm so glad I have such a lot. . . . Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting."
"I'd like to add some beauty to life. . . . I don't exactly want to make people know more . . . but I'd love to make them have a pleasanter time because of me . . . to have some little joy or happy thought that would never have existed if I hadn't been born."
After being told by Marilla "You take things too much to heart, Anne." Anne's response is the same as mine:
"I can't help it. I want everybody to love me and it hurts me so when anybody doesn't."
"True friendship is a very helpful thing indeed . . . and we should have a very high ideal of it, and never sully it by any failure in truth and sincerity."
"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."
Diana: "I think people make their names nice or ugly just by what they are themselves."
Anne: "That's a lovely idea. . . . Living so that you beautify your name, even if it wasn't beautiful to begin with . . . making it stand in people's thoughts for something so lovely and pleasant that they never think of it by itself."
"I think the little things in life often make more trouble than the big things."
"She seemed to walk in an atmosphere of things about to happen."
"What I want to get out of my college course is some knowledge of the best way of living life and doing the most and best with it. I want to learn to understand and help other people and myself."
"I fancy it's the unexpected things that give spice to life."
"There are times when common sense has no power over me. Common nonsense takes possession of my soul."
"The sorrows God sent us brought comfort and strength with them, while the sorrows we brought on ourselves, through folly or wickedness, were by far the hardest to bear."
"He says, when I'm perplexed, just to do what I would wish I had done when I shall be eighty."
"Oh, I don't want to know what they think. I don't want to see myself as others see me. I'm sure it would be horribly uncomfortable most of the time."
"Just think of all the great and noble souls who have lived and worked in the world. . . . Isn't it worthwhile to come after them and inherit what they won and taught?"
"When you've learned to laugh at the things that should be laughed at, and not to laugh at those that shouldn't, you've got wisdom and understanding."
"Things are so mixed-up in real life. They aren't clear-cut and trimmed off, as they are in novels."
"Kindred spirits alone do not change with changing years."
"I'm still just as I used to be in my childhood . . . I can't bear to have people not liking me."
"I shouldn't like to govern by fear . . . I want my pupils to love me."
"Wouldn't it be a rather drab world if everybody was wise and sensible . . . and good? What would we find to talk about?"
"Whenever you come into a room . . . the people in it feel happier."
"Isn't a road an interesting thing? . . . Not a straight road, but one with ends and kinks around which anything of beauty and surprise may be lurking. I've always loved bends in roads."
"It doesn't matter how poor you are as long as you've got something to love."
"Isn't it fascinating to look at the blank pages and wonder what will be written on them?"
"Sarcasm . . . always hurt her . . . raised blisters on her soul that smarted for months."
"I'm glad I don't live in Yesterday . . . that Tomorrow is still a friend."
"It's rather hard to decide just when people are grown up. . . . Some are grown up when they're born, and others ain't grown up when they're eighty."
"Shirking responsibilities is the curse of our modern life--the secret of all the unrest and discontent that is seething in the world." "Thank goodness we can choose our friends."
"When a fellow has a home and a dear, little, red-haired wife in it what more need he ask of life?"
"All in all, it was a never-to-be-forgotten summer--one of those summers which come seldom into any life, but leave a rich heritage of beautiful memories in their going--one of those summers which, in a fortunate combination of delightful weather, delightful friends and delightful doings, come as near to perfection as anything can come in this world."
