Folks who make such a fuss about their rights turn them into wrongs sometimes. -- (from Behind the White Brick)
Frances Hodgson BurnettI dare say it is rather hard to be a rat,โ she mused. โNobody likes you. People jump and run away and scream out: โOh, a horrid rat!โ I shouldnโt like people to scream and jump and say: โOh, a horrid Sara!โ the moment they saw me, and set traps for me, and pretend they were dinner. Itโs so different to be a sparrow. But nobody asked this rat if he wanted to be a rat when he was made. Nobody said: โWouldnโt you rather be a sparrow?
Frances Hodgson BurnettShe liked books more than anything else, and was, in fact, always inventing stories of beautiful things and telling them to herself.
Frances Hodgson BurnettIf nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that--warm things, kind things, sweet things--help and comfort and laughter--and sometimes gay, kind laughter is the best help of all.
Frances Hodgson BurnettThe difficulty will be to keep her from learning too fast and too much. She is always sitting with her little nose burrowing into books. She doesn't read them, Miss Minchin; she gobbles them up as if she were a little wolf instead of a little girl. She is always starving for new books to gobble, and she wants grown-up books--great, big, fat ones--French and German as well as English--history and biography and poets, and all sorts of things. Drag her away from her books when she reads too much.
Frances Hodgson Burnett