To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.

Portable property is happiness in a pocketbook.

It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.

You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that to torment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonymous words.

A family of ten children will be always called a fine family, where there are heads and arms and legs enough for the number.

Do not give way to useless alarm; though it is right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain.

It was for the sake of what had been, rather than what was.