I shall be thirty-one next birthday. My youth is gone like a dream; and very little use have I ever made of it. What have I done these last thirty years? Precious little.

Writers cannot choose their own mood: with them it is not always hide-tide, nor --thank Heaven!--always Storm.

...it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.

I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you. Don't flatter me.

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs. With this creed, revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low. I live in calm, looking to the end.

You have rather the look of another world. I marvelled where you had got that sort of face.