Johanna Spyri

I want to go about like the light-footed goats!

“I think I would rather not know,” said Martha, shaking the child’s hand. “It seems to me that the wind has pulled you about quite a little. Come, we’ll straighten you up again.”

“Saying good night to the mountains, he throws his most beautiful rays to them, that they may not forget him till the morning.”

She swallowed very hard on every mouthful, because she had to swallow a great deal more besides.

Nobody can ever show me the light again.

“It is a shame that the most beautiful thing in the world should be so little practiced.”

I want her to be free and happy as a bird!

“I am afraid of nothing in the whole world⁠—except of the dark,”

Nobody had time to yawn that morning.

Cornelli sang everything as lightly and freely as a bird, and with such a clear and resonant voice that everybody got pleasure from it.

Miss Rottenmeier looks like a loaded cannon.

I think that even Swiss children are made to touch the earth, otherwise they would have to have wings.

If somebody’s name is Heidi, I call her so.

Heidi never knew if it was summer or winter, for the walls opposite never changed.

Because I would rather be with my grandfather on the Alp than anywhere on earth.

You see, Heidi, I am more happy than I deserve; to be at peace with God and men makes one’s heart feel light.

Why doesn’t the army go forward? Is it the field-marshal’s fault, or the fault of the troop?

One must wait patiently, for God knows how to turn the saddest things to something happy in the end.

So it happened sometimes that there were hardly any nouns left in the hymns that Peter read.

If you ever sit down among them, you will feel as if you could never get up any more, it is so beautiful.