some people always have a touch of youth about them.

We are always children to our mothers.

Well, Buttermere, this is a day that is good to live and breathe in, that makes a man feel in his prime. Standing here in front of my house, I feel as young as when I moved into it thirty years ago, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. What aged man would you take me to be, as I step as it were casually into your view?

It is not for us to hold ourselves above the position of grateful people. We have to be able to accept. Anything else shows an unwillingness to grant someone else the superior place.

There is danger in courage. Cowardice is a power for good. We hardly know what it prevents.

As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots.

At a certain point my novels set. They set just as hard as that jam jar. And then I know they are finished.