There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one.

Evil thought is a dangerous pet. It is safer to play with it from behind the iron bars of circumstance.

In the church is a memorial to Mrs. Sarah Hill, who bequeathed 1 pound annually, to be divided at Easter, between two boys and two girls who "have never been undutiful to their parents; who have never been known to swear or to tell untruths, to steal, or to break windows." Fancy giving up all that for five shillings a year! It is not worth it!

I love the chill October days, when the brown leaves lie thick and sodden underneath your feet ... the evenings in late autumn time, when the white mist creeps across the fields, making it seem as though old Earth, feeling the night air cold to its poor bones, were drawing ghostly bedclothes round its withered limbs.

It is well we cannot see into the future. There are few boys of fourteen who would not feel ashamed of themselves at forty.

The proverbial Englishman, we know from old chronicler Froissart, takes his pleasures sadly, and the Englishwoman goes a step further and takes her pleasures in sadness itself.

Life will always remain a gamble, with prizes sometimes for the imprudent, and blanks so often to the wise.