Quotes from work

A Little Princess

“She did not care very much for other little girls, but if she had plenty of books she could console herself.”

“I don't know who it is," she said; "but somebody cares for me a little. I have a friend.”

“All women are princesses, it is our right.”

“Somehow, something always happens just before things get to the very worst. It is as if Magic did it. If I could only just remember that always. The worse thing never quite comes.”

“I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one.”

“That's what I look at some people for. I like to know about them. I think them over afterward.”

“Things happen to people by accident.”

“Perhaps you can feel if you can't hear. Perhaps kind thoughts reach people somehow, even through windows and doors and walls. Perhaps you feel a little warm and comforted.”

“But I suppose there might be good in things, even if we don't see it.”

“She looked into the staring glass eyes and complacent face, and suddenly a sort of heartbroken rage seized her. She lifted her little savage hand and knocked Emily off the chair, bursting into a passion of sobbing- Sara who never cried.”

“Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book.”

“It's so easy that when you begin you can't stop. You just go on and on doing it always.”

“Perhaps to be able to learn things quickly isn't everything. To be kind is worth a great deal to other people… Lots of clever people have done harm and have been wicked.”

“What you have to do with your mind, when your body is miserable, is to make it think of something else.”

“It's true," she said. "Sometimes I do pretend I am a princess. I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one.”

“Are you learning me by heart, little Sara?" he said, stroking her hair.
"No," she answered. "I know you by heart. You are inside my heart.”

“Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it.”

“I don't like it, papa," she said. "But then I dare say soldiers - even brave ones - don't reallygoing into battle.”

“If Sara had been a boy and lived a few centuries ago, her father used to say, 'she would have gone about the country with her sword drawn, rescuing and defending everyone in distress. She always wants to fight when she sees people in trouble.”