Uncles and aunts, and cousins, are all very well, and fathers and mothers are not to be despised; but a grandmother, at holiday time, is worth them all.

Too much indulgence has ruined thousands of children; too much love not one.

I hate the word proper. If you tell me a thing is not proper, I immediately feel the most rabid desire to go 'neck and heels' into it.

A little oil makes machinery work easy.

When a literary person's exhaustive work is over, the last thing he wishes to do is to talk books.

I am getting sick of people. I am falling in love with things. They hold their tongues.

Everything in the country, animate and inanimate, seems to whisper, be serene, be kind, be happy. We grow tolerant there unconsciously.