Pollyanna Grows Up Quotes
"I couldn't—I just couldn't live in this house. You know I couldn't," she finished gently.
"But I don't want to do—anything else," murmured Ruth Carew, drearily.
"You might have known," she said. "You never stay—here."
"Ruth, look here," she challenged. "You're thirty-three years old. You have good health—or would have, if you treated yourself properly—and you certainly have an abundance of time and a superabundance of money. Surely anybody would say you ought to find something to do this glorious morning besides sitting moped up in this tomb-like house with instructions to the maid that you'll see no one."
"Ruth!" ejaculated her sister, stung into something very like anger. Then suddenly she laughed. "Oh, Ruth, Ruth, I'd like to give you a dose of Pollyanna. I don't know any one who needs it more!"
"Pollyanna isn't a medicine, my dear," she said demurely, "—though I have heard some people call her a tonic."
"The harder it was to find the glad part, the more fun it was, only when it was too awful hard, like she had found it sometimes."
"Ruth!" she said, at last, with a touch of exasperation, "forgive me, but—are you always going to be like this?"
"Isn't there anything in the world but Jamie—to make you any happy?"
"If you could only get interested in something outside of your own life, it would help so much; and—"
"A whole lot of anything is nice—that is, good things; not such things as medicine and funerals, of course!"
"The time to take frosting and good times is while they are going; so I want to see all I can now while I'm here."
"I'm so glad we can imagine things, aren't you?"
"Such a lot of perfectly lovely things, you know. But I've had yesterday, and now I'm living today, and I've got tomorrow still coming."
"Always, before, there have been bad things for folks to play the game on, and the badder they are the more fun 'tis to get them out."
"And of course I love the auto, anyway. It's only that there are so many more people in the trolley car, and it's such fun to watch them!"
"Things that are so are so, and they can't be any other way. So what's the use thinking how they might be?"
"There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground but holds some joy, of silence or of sound."
"When you—you can't even walk, you can't fight battles and win trophies, and have fair ladies hand you your sword, and bestow upon you the golden guerdon."
"You just have to sit and think; and times like that your think gets to be something awful."
"Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem."
"Everythin' that had anythin' about it that I liked I'd put down in the book."
"And what fun it will be to get them! How I wish I was rich so I could help, too; but I'm 'most as glad to be with you when you get them."
"I can't let you do all that for me. If you—cared it would be different. But you don't care—not really."
"It's only that it's so perfectly, perfectly beautiful that I just had to cry. I was thinking how Jamie would love to see it."
"The harder I'm glad for myself, the sorrier I am for him. I never knew the game to act so funny."
"There's always plenty of helping hands stretched out to them that has gone wrong."
"Only sometimes I wonder there don't some of 'em think of helping the girls before they go wrong."
"Why don't they give good girls pretty homes with books and pictures and soft carpets and music, and somebody 'round 'em to care?"
"But she said something else, too. She said: 'Sadie, if they'd taken one half the pains to show me they cared and wanted to help long ago when I was an honest, self-respecting, hard-working, homesick girl—I wouldn't have been here for them to help now.'"
"But, oh, say! You can see it, after all. It isn't gone yet."
"Why, you don't know how good she is, and how much money she gives to—to charitable 'sociations and everything."
"Sometimes I wonder there don't some of 'em think of helping the girls before they go wrong."
"Just living along and knowing you're going to have everything you want is so—so humdrum, you know."
"Of course you did," wept Pollyanna, fumbling in her bag for her handkerchief. "And 'twas lovely to have you do it, too,—just lovely."
"Poor lamb! I'm glad I come, anyhow, for your sake."
"Oh, but she wasn't vexed at that," corrected Pollyanna, agitatedly. "It's just her way, Nancy. You see, she doesn't like to show how badly she feels about—about the doctor. And she's so afraid she will show it that she—she just takes anything for an excuse to—to talk about. She does it to me, too, just the same. So I know all about it. See?"
"And to think the first thing I should have done was somethin' ter vex her, and—"
"You see, I mustn't—cry—before—her," faltered Pollyanna; "and it was hard—coming here—the first time, you know, and all. And I knew how she was feeling."
"Of course, if the doctor—" The words choked into silence.
"To think that after all you've done for me, auntie—to think that now, if I only could, I'd have such a splendid chance to help! And yet—I can't do it. Oh, why wasn't I born with something that's worth money?"
"Dear, dear, this will never do!" she exclaimed, with a complete change of manner. "Don't you fret, auntie. What'll you wager that I don't develop the most marvelous talent going, one of these days?"
"Besides, I think it's real exciting—all this. There's so much uncertainty in it. There's a lot of fun in wanting things—and then watching for them to come."