Pollyanna quotes

That was two months before.

She knew Miss Polly now as a stern, severe-faced woman who frowned if a knife clattered to the floor, or if a door banged⁠—but who never thought to smile even when knives and doors were still.

“When you’ve finished your morning work, Nancy,” Miss Polly was saying now, “you may clear the little room at the head of the stairs in the attic, and make up the cot bed.

There was no answer. Nancy was very busy, apparently, with her head in the trunk. Pollyanna, standing at the bureau, gazed a little wistfully at the bare wall above.

“And I can be glad there isn’t any looking-glass here, too, ’cause where there isn’t any glass I can’t see my freckles.”

Nancy made a sudden queer little sound with her mouth—but when Pollyanna turned, her head was in the trunk again. At one of the windows, a few minutes later, Pollyanna gave a glad cry and clapped her hands joyously.

Then I happened to think how I hated to see my freckles in the looking-glass, and I saw that lovely picture out the window, too; so then I knew I’d found the things to be glad about.

You see, when you’re hunting for the glad things, you sort of forget the other kind⁠—like the doll you wanted, you know.

”

Aunt Polly, with the bent old man, was leaning over a rosebush when Pollyanna, gurgling with delight, flung herself upon her.

“Oh, Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, I reckon I am glad this morning just to be alive!”

“PollyAnna!” remonstrated the lady, sternly, pulling herself as erect as she could with a dragging weight of ninety pounds hanging about her neck. “Is this the usual way you say good morning?”

Pollyanna cried out in dismay.

“Oh, but Aunt Polly, Aunt Polly, you haven’t left me any time at all just to⁠—to live.”

“To live, child! What do you mean? As if you weren’t living all the time!”

“Oh, of course I’d be breathing all the time I was doing those things, Aunt Polly, but I wouldn’t be living.

You breathe all the time you’re asleep, but you aren’t living.

I mean living—doing the things you want to do: playing outdoors, reading (to myself, of course), climbing hills, talking to Mr.

Tom in the garden, and Nancy, and finding out all about the houses and the people and everything everywhere all through the perfectly lovely streets I came through yesterday. That’s what I call living, Aunt Polly.

Just breathing isn’t living!

”

“Why, Nancy, that’s so! I was playing the game—but that’s one of the times I just did it without thinking, I reckon. You see, you do, lots of times; you get so used to it—looking for something to be glad about, you know.

And most generally there is something about everything that you can be glad about, if you keep hunting long enough to find it.

”

“Yes, when you might be just living, you know.

It seems such a pity we can’t live nights, too.

”

“Well, no, I didn’t,” retorted Mrs. Snow, dryly.

Mrs. Snow had lived forty years, and for fifteen of those years she had been too busy wishing things were different to find much time to enjoy things as they were.

“Oh, but your eyes are so big and dark, and your hair’s all dark, too, and curly,” cooed Pollyanna. “I love black curls. (That’s one of the things I’m going to have when I get to Heaven.)

“Well, what if it is?” snapped the sick woman.

“I needn’t stay in the dark all my life, if I am sick, need I?”

“Why, n-no, of course not,” rejoined Milly, in hasty conciliation, as she reached for the medicine bottle. “It’s only—well, you know very well that I’ve tried to get you to have a lighter room for ages and you wouldn’t.”

“Oh, no, sir. You don’t look a mite like a Ladies’ Aider—not but that you’re just as good, of course—maybe better,” she added in hurried politeness.

“You see, I’m sure you’re much nicer than you look!”

The man made a queer noise in his throat.

The woman hesitated.

She did not realize it herself, but she had so long been accustomed to wanting what she did not have, that to state offhand what she did want seemed impossible⁠—until she knew what she had.

Obviously, however, she must say something. This extraordinary child was waiting.

“I have to be,” retorted Pollyanna calmly, “else I couldn’t find out a thing about you.

If you’d talk more I wouldn’t talk so much.

”

“Not but that it’s good, of course, to send money to the heathen, and I shouldn’t want ’em not to send some there,” sighed Pollyanna to herself, as she trudged sorrowfully along.

“But they acted as if little boys here weren’t any account⁠—only little boys ’way off. I should think, though, they’d rather see Jimmy Bean grow⁠—than just a report!”

Well, they can just play you are the little India boy this time. I reckon you’re far enough away to make a report, all right. You wait. I’ll write ’em. I’ll write Mrs. White. No, I’ll write Mrs. Jones.

Mrs. White has got the most money, but Mrs. Jones gives the most⁠—which is kind of funny, isn’t it?⁠—when you think of it.

But I reckon some of the Aiders will take you.”

“Yes,” responded Pollyanna. “But I don’t see it that way at all.

I don’t think you have to learn how to live.

I didn’t, anyhow.”

“I shouldn’t care,” breathed Pollyanna, her fascinated eyes on the brilliant band of colors across the pillow.

“Just as if anybody’d care when they were living all the time in a rainbow!”

The man laughed. He was watching Pollyanna’s rapt face a little curiously. Suddenly a new thought came to him. He touched the bell at his side.

For a moment there was silence. Then a low voice from the bed said unsteadily:

“Perhaps; but I’m thinking that the very finest prism of them all is yourself, Pollyanna.”

“Oh, but I don’t show beautiful red and green and purple when the sun shines through me, Mr. Pendleton!”

“But—well, I didn’t bring her here. Never mind why. I just didn’t that’s all. And ever since then this great gray pile of stone has been a house—never a home.

It takes a woman’s hand and heart, or a child’s presence, to make a home, Pollyanna; and I have not had either.

Now will you come, my dear?”

“As if I’d leave her now!” thought Pollyanna, as she climbed the stairs to her room a little later.

“I always knew I wanted to live with Aunt Polly⁠—but I reckon maybe I didn’t know quite how much I wanted Aunt Polly⁠—to want to live with me!”

The task of telling John Pendleton of her decision would not be an easy one, Pollyanna knew, and she dreaded it. She was very fond of John Pendleton, and she was very sorry for him—because he seemed to be so sorry for himself.

“Pollyanna, I suspect you are right—more right than you know,” he said gently. “In fact, I know that a ‘nice live little boy’ would be far better than—my skeleton in the closet; only—we aren’t always willing to make the exchange.

We are apt to still cling to⁠—our skeletons, Pollyanna.

However, suppose you tell me a little more about this nice little boy.” And Pollyanna told him.

“Oh, yes,” nodded Pollyanna, emphatically. “He said he felt better right away, that first day he thought to count ’em.

He said if God took the trouble to tell us eight hundred times to be glad and rejoice, He must want us to do it⁠—some.

And father felt ashamed that he hadn’t done it more. After that, they got to be such a comfort to him, you know, when things went wrong; when the Ladies’ Aiders got to fight—I mean, when they didn’t agree about something,” corrected Pollyanna, hastily.

… Instead of always harping on a man’s faults, tell him of his virtues. Try to pull him out of his rut of bad habits. Hold up to him his better self, his real self that can dare and do and win out! …

The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful character is contagious, and may revolutionize a whole town.

… People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts. If a man feels kindly and obliging, his neighbors will feel that way, too, before long. But if he scolds and scowls and criticizes—his neighbors will return scowl for scowl, and add interest!

Hold up to him his better self, his real self that can dare and do and win out! … The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful character is contagious, and may revolutionize a whole town. …

People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts.

If a man feels kindly and obliging, his neighbors will feel that way, too, before long. But if he scolds and scowls and criticizes—his neighbors will return scowl for scowl, and add interest!

If a man feels kindly and obliging, his neighbors will feel that way, too, before long. But if he scolds and scowls and criticizes—his neighbors will return scowl for scowl, and add interest! …

When you look for the bad, expecting it, you will get it. When you know you will find the good⁠—you will get that.

… Tell your son Tom you know he’ll be glad to fill that woodbox—then watch him start, alert and interested!”

Pollyanna laughed softly again. She turned luminous eyes on her aunt. “Well, you see, since I have been hurt, you’ve called me ‘dear’ lots of times—and you didn’t before.

I love to be called ‘dear’⁠—by folks that belong to you, I mean.

Some of the Ladies’ Aiders did call me that; and of course that was pretty nice, but not so nice as if they had belonged to me, like you do. Oh, Aunt Polly, I’m so glad you belong to me!”

Last week I heard how she couldn’t ever walk again, and—and I wished I could give up my two uselessly well legs for hers. She’d do more good trotting around on ’em one hour than I could in a hundred years. But never mind that.

Legs ain’t always given to the one who can make the best use of ’em, I notice.

”

“I know it does sound nutty, ma’am. But let me tell ye. That blessed lamb found out I hated Monday mornin’s somethin’ awful; an’ what does she up an’ tell me one day but this:

‘Well, anyhow, Nancy, I should think you could be gladder on Monday mornin’ than on any other day in the week, because ’twould be a whole week before you’d have another one!’

An’ I’m blest if I hain’t thought of it ev’ry Monday mornin’ since—an’ it has helped, ma’am. It made me laugh, anyhow, ev’ry time I thought of it; an’ laughin’ helps, ye know—it does, it does!”