Browse 10 quotations connecting Frances Hodgson Burnett with Effort, with meanings, source notes and related themes.
Each quotation is included because its central idea connects with this theme, not simply because one matching word appears in the sentence.
Sources represented here include The Lost Prince, The Secret Garden. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include The Lost Prince, The Secret Garden.
“But still night after night the game was played.”
The brief sentence makes repetition itself visible: improvement continues after early success because practice is maintained night after night.
Source note: The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. 'The game' is the boys’ repeated training exercise in memory, recognition and recall.
“The more you draw, the better. Draw everything you can.”
Repeated drawing is treated as the route to improvement, making practice and quantity of attempts part of developing a useful skill.
Source note: The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. Loristan encourages Marco to strengthen a sketching ability useful to the story’s secret mission.
“I learned well because I never forgot it. And I learned. Did I not?”
Marco looks back on deliberate training and judges himself by whether he actually learned and retained what repeated instruction required.
Source note: The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. Marco says this while explaining that his father had long been preparing him for responsibility within the fictional plot.
“To make each one many times was the best way to imbed it in his memory.”
The narration connects repeated practice with stronger recall, showing Marco deliberately using repetition to make a learned association more durable.
Source note: The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. The exercise involves repeatedly sketching faces connected with places for the novel’s secret mission.
“After a third day's concentration they knew by heart everything given to them to learn.”
The narration connects sustained concentration across several days with mastery of the assigned material rather than portraying learning as instantaneous.
Source note: The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. The material being memorized is fictional mission information, while the quoted sentence simply describes the learning process.
“Another part was The Rat's training of his memory, and bringing home his proofs of advance at night when he returned from his walk.”
The Rat tracks improvement through repeated memory exercises and concrete evidence of progress, making development something practiced and demonstrated over time.
Source note: The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. The exercise is part of the boys’ fictional preparation; 'proofs of advance' refers to remembered and described observations.
“They concentrated all their powers upon it. They wrote and re-wrote—they repeated to each other what they committed to memory as if it were a lesson.”
The boys improve through concentrated rehearsal, rewriting and mutual repetition, giving the learning process visible effort rather than effortless talent.
Source note: The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. The material being memorized belongs to a fictional covert political mission, so the record focuses on the described study process rather than the mission itself.
“You can do it! You can do it!”
The repeated encouragement is paired in the scene with Colin’s own attempt, making confidence a support for action rather than a substitute for trying.
Source note: The Secret Garden; Project Gutenberg #113. Colin recalls Mary repeating this while he was trying to stand; the source does not justify using the line as medical treatment advice.
“I had to try myself at the same time, of course.”
Colin explicitly adds his own effort to the encouragement he received, keeping agency and practice inside the novel’s language of 'Magic.'
Source note: The Secret Garden; Project Gutenberg #113. The sentence immediately follows Colin’s memory of being encouraged while attempting to stand; it remains fictional context, not rehabilitation guidance.
“I’m the only one in the world who wants it to be alive.”
Mary’s desire to revive the neglected garden turns care into a purpose: she values the possibility of life before she knows whether the plants can recover.
Source note: The Secret Garden; Project Gutenberg #113. Mary is speaking about the locked garden she has discovered, so the sentence remains tied to the novel’s literal plot.