My childhood was full of deep sorrows - colic, whooping-cough, dread of ghosts, hell, Satan, and a Deity in the sky who was angry when I ate too much plumcake.

All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women and children -- in our gardens and in our houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion but in the secret of deep human sympathy.

One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

Speech may be barren; but it is ridiculous to suppose that silence is always brooding on a nestful of eggs.

Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning.

...Though there's reasons in things as nobody knows on---- that's pretty much what I've made out; yet some folks are so wise they'll find you fifty reasons straight off, and all the while the real reason's winking at 'em in the corner, and they niver see't.

It is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.