Maternal love, like an orange tree, buds and blossoms and bears at once. When a woman puts her finger for the first time into the tiny hand of her baby and feels that helpless clutch which tightens her very heartstrings, she is born again with her newborn child.

Miranda Sawyer had a heart, of course, but she had never used it for any other purpose than the pumping and circulating of blood.

It is very funny, but you do not always have to see people to love them. Just think about it, and see if it isn't so.

The world is always a new plaything to children, while to the old it seems falling to pieces from sheer dryness. Everything loses its value with time, but it is not the fault of the fruit, but of the mouth and the tongue.

There is a kind of magicness about going far away and then coming back all changed.

To let blessed babies go dangling and dawdling without names, for months and months, was enough to ruin them for life.

You may have noted the fact that it is a person's virtues as often as his vices that make him difficult to live with.