Quotes from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
By Nava Atlas | On October 26, 2017 | Updated May 6, 2023 | Comments (15)
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849 – 1924) was first published as a book in 1911 after being serialized starting in 1909. Here we’ll explore a selection of touching quotes from A Secret Garden.
At the start of the story, we meet Mary Lennox, a sickly and neglected 10-year-old born to wealthy British parents in colonial India. After a cholera epidemic kills her parents, Mary is sent to England to live with her uncle in a mysterious house.
The tale follows the spoiled and sulky young girl as she slowly sheds her sour demeanor after discovering a secret locked garden on the grounds of her uncle’s manor.
She befriends Dickon, one of the servant’s brother, a free spirit who can communicate with animals, and Colin, her uncle’s son, a neglected and lonely invalid.
The Secret Garden is a tale spun around the power of kindness and love, painting powerful imagery of the damage that neglect and selfishness can produce. Mary’s redemption through learning to care for others has made this a timeless classic.
A bit about the author: Frances Hodgson Burnett was born in Cheetham, England. She emigrated to the U.S. with her mother and siblings when she was in her teens, and started publishing stories in magazines to help support her family.
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Review of The Secret Garden
Charles Robinson illustration from the 1911 edition
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During the course of a writing career that spanned some fifty years, Burnett produced over fifty books and thirteen stage plays. Most have been forgotten, swept into the literary dustbin that contains the legions of overly sentimental stories that were produced in that era.
But she produced three works that endured — Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Secret Garden, and A Little Princess. They each had strong, offbeat characters and rose above the sugary sweetness and morality of children’s tales of the era.
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“It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place any one could imagine. The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were matted together.”
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“That afternoon the whole world seemed to devote itself to being perfect and radiantly beautiful and kind to one boy.”
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“Two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way — or always to have it.”
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“I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us”
“At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can’t be done, then they see it can be done — then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.”
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“One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands out and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun — which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.”
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“He had made himself believe that he was going to get well, which was really more than half the battle.”
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“One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts — just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries — as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.”
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“Much more surprising things can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.”
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“Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world,” he said wisely one day, “but people don’t know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment.”
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“As she came closer to him she noticed that there was a clean fresh scent of heather and grass and leaves about him, almost as if he were made of them.”
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“But the calm had brought a sort of courage and hope with it. Instead of giving way to thoughts of the worst, he actually found he was trying to believe in better things.”
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“It is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun …”
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“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.”
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“Mistress Mary always felt that however many years she lived she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow. ”
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“Sometimes since I’ve been in the garden I’ve looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing.”
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“And they both began to laugh over nothing as children will when they are happy together. And they laughed so that in the end they were making as much noise as if they had been two ordinary healthy natural ten-year-old creatures—instead of a hard, little, unloving girl and a sickly boy who believed that he was going to die.”
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“Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden — in all the places.”
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Charles Robinson illustration from The Secret Garden, 1911 edition
Hi Nava, I need to know if there is a line like ‘It’s not just a garden,” says Mary’s uncle, “but a universe.” I cannot find it. In the film version by Agnieszka Holland (1993), Mary tells Colin a story of a shepard who ‘looked liek everyone but inside was different because there was a whole universe when one looked into his throat’. Is there such a story in the book?
Thank you in advance,
Liliana
LIliana, here’s the original edition on Project Gutenberg. As you’ll see if you do an internal search, that line isn’t part of it. I hope this helps! https://www.gutenberg.org/files/113/113-h/113-h.htm
I cannot find this quote in my copy of The Secret Garden: “If you look the right way you can see that the whole world is a garden.” I have the Sterling version.
Hi Leslie — you’re right, it’s not in there. I’m searching in the original edition on Project Gutenberg. I’ve removed it. It’s like “internet telephone,” sometimes quotes get misattributed. I’m going to go through this whole post and make sure these quotes are in the book. Thank you for pointing this out! (I’ve already removed the quote you inquired about.)
I needed a qoute for an essay and found just what I needed, thank you.
You’re very welcome!
“At first it seemed that green things would never cease pushing their way through the Earth in the grass in the bed even in the crevices of the walls then the green things began to show Buds and the buds began to unfurl and show color every shade of blue every shade of purple every tenth and Hue of crimson. And it’s Happy Days flowers have been tucked away into every inch and hole-and-corner Ben Weatherstaff had seen it done and had himself scraped out motor from between the bricks of the wall and made pockets of Earth for lovely clinging things to grow on.” Last quote.
And this one. “Oh the things that have happened in that Garden. If you have never had a garden you cannot understand and if you have a garden you will know that it would take a whole book to describe all the that came to pass there.”
Use this quote “It’s magic said Mary. But not black, it’s as white as snow.”
Can you put quotes when mary first went into the garden?
Hi Brady — I’m not sure exactly what you’re after, but you’ll find the entire text of The Secret Garden here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/113/113-h/113-h.htm I don’t remember exactly when Mary first discovers the garden, but I think it’s around chapters 5 & 6. I hope you find what you’re looking for!
Thanks!
The quotes are wonderful. Really wakes you up and looks at life the way writer wants you to look at it – in a positive, magical way.
This is wonderful. Thank you!
You’re very welcome, Sarah!