Readings from The Blue Castle

For those of you who don't know, I gathered inspiration for my blog (along with it's name) from L.M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle. The book holds a special place in my heart. I remember reading it as a young girl and becoming enchanted with the story of Valancy, a young woman who lives a very drab existence but after a doctor's diagnosis she finally begins to truly and passionately live. 

One day I stumbled upon this vintage illustration of the fictional book inside the book The Blue Castle. I definitely want to get it printed and framed one day but thought in the meantime

I would share it with you all, along with excerpts from my favorite book...

"Just to love! She did not ask to be loved. It was rapture enough just to sit there beside him in silence, alone in the summer night in the white splendor of moonshine, with the wind blowing down on them out of the pine woods."

"Isn't it better to have your heart broken than to have it wither up? Before it could be broken it must have felt something splendid. That would be worth the pain."

"But now she loved winter. Winter was beautiful "up back" - almost intolerably beautiful. Days of clear brilliance. Evenings that were like cups of glamour - the purest vintage of winter's wine. Nights with their fire of stars. Cold, exquisite winter sunrises. Lovely ferns of ice all over the windows of the Blue Castle. Moonlight on birches in a silver thaw. Ragged shadows on windy evenings - torn, twisted, fantastic shadows. Great silences, austere and searching. Jeweled, barbaric hills. The sun suddenly breaking through grey clouds over long, white Mistawis. Ice-grey twilights, broken by snow-squalls, when their cosy living-room, with its goblins of firelight and inscrutable cats, seemed cosier than ever. Every hour brought a new revelation and wonder."

"What a spineless thing I must be not to have one enemy!"

"She had always envied the wind. So free. Blowing where it listed. Through the hills. Over the lakes. What a tang, what a zip it had! What a magic of adventure!"

"When he said good evening you felt that it was a good evening

and that it was partly his doing that it was."

"If you can sit in silence with a person for half an hour and yet be entirely comfortable, you and that person can be friends. If you cannot, friends you'll never be and you need not waste time in trying."

"Moonlight and the murmur of pines blended together so that one could hardly tell which was light and which was sound."

Illustration taken from Pinterest. Quotes taken from The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery.