Browse 12 quotations connecting Frances Hodgson Burnett with Hope, 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 Secret Garden, The Lost Prince, A Little Princess. Keeping the work and source note beside each quotation makes differences in setting, speaker and emphasis easier to see.
Sources represented here include The Secret Garden, The Lost Prince, A Little Princess.
“If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside.”
Dignity is separated from possessions and appearance, locating self-worth in conduct and inner standards when external status has been stripped away.
Source note: A Little Princess; Sara uses an imagined inner identity to preserve dignity during poverty and mistreatment.
“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.
“I am not afraid. I shall not be afraid. In some way I shall get out.”
Faced with immediate confinement and uncertainty, Marco turns fear into a commitment to keep looking for a way out rather than surrendering to panic.
Source note: The Lost Prince; Project Gutenberg #384. Marco is trapped during the fictional mission; the line describes literary courage and does not advise ignoring real-world danger.
“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.
“Being alive is the Magic—being strong is the Magic.”
Colin’s chant celebrates life and increasing strength as something wondrous after a long period in which he expected decline and death.
Source note: The Secret Garden; Project Gutenberg #113. This is a fictional child’s 'Magic' rhetoric and not evidence that illness can be cured by belief or positive thinking.
“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.
“The flowers are growing—the roots are stirring. That is the Magic.”
The children treat ordinary signs of spring growth as evidence of renewal, finding wonder in processes that begin below the visible surface.
Source note: The Secret Garden; Project Gutenberg #113. Colin’s 'Magic' language is part of the novel’s imaginative framework and is not presented as a medical mechanism.
“At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done.”
New possibilities often move through stages from disbelief to curiosity and finally hope, especially when evidence begins to challenge settled expectations.
Source note: The Secret Garden, Chapter XXVII; the narrator describes how unfamiliar possibilities gradually become believable.