Never let the estate decrease in your hands. It is only by such resolutions as that that English noblemen and English gentlemen can preserve their country. I cannot bear to see property changing hands.

It is very hard, that necessity of listening to a man who says nothing

Little bits of things make me do it; — perhaps a word that I said and ought not to have said ten years ago; — the most ordinary little mistakes, even my own past thoughts to myself about the merest trifles. They are always making me shiver.

Success is a poison that should only be taken late in life and then only in small doses.

The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself.

I have no ambition to surprise my reader. Castles with unknown passages are not compatible with my homely muse.

My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.