For after my marriage I had made various attempts to write fiction. They were clearly failures.
Mary Augusta WardBut a girl of seventeen is not always thinking of books, especially in the Oxford summer term.
Mary Augusta WardThe thoughts and opinions of one human being, if they are sincere, must always have an interest for some other human beings. The world is there to think about; and if we have lived, or are living, with any sort of energy, we must have thought about it, and about ourselves in relation to it - thought 'furiously' often. And it is out of the many 'thinkings' of many folk, strong or weak, dull or far-ranging, that thought itself grows.
Mary Augusta Ward