I shall be so glad if you will tell me what to read. I have been looking into all the books in the library at Offendene, but there is nothing readable. The leaves all stick together and smell musty. I wish I could write books to amuse myself, as you can! How delightful it must be to write books after one's own taste instead of reading other people's! Home-made books must be so nice.

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy as dark as a buried Babylon.

The best augury of a man's success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

'Character," says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms - character is destiny'.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger-not to be interfered with by speech or action which would distract the sensations from the fresh enjoyment of repose.