Possibly the Creator did not make the world chiefly for the purpose of providing studies for gifted novelists; but if He had done so, we can scarcely imagine that He could have offered anything much better in the way of material.

I can remember no time when I did not understand that my mother must write books because people would have and read them; but I cannot remember one hour in which her children needed her and did not find her.

Out of my discomforts, which were small enough, grew one thing for which I have all my life been grateful, the formation of fixed habits of work.

It is not the straining for great things that is most effective; it is the doing the little things, the common duties, a little better and better.

Surely it is one of the simplest laws of taste in dress, that it shall not attract undue attention from the wearer to the worn.

It is not in our drawing-rooms that we should look to judge of the intrinsic worth of any style of dress. The street-car is a truer crucible of its inherent value.

Surely it is one of the requisites of a tasteful garb that the expression of effort to please shall be wanting in it; that the mysteries of the toilet shall not be suggested by it; that the steps to its completion shall be knocked away like the sculptor's ladder from the statue, and the mental force expended upon it be swept away out of sight like the chips on the studio floor.