The slightest emotion of disinterested kindness that passes through the mind improves and refreshes that mind, producing generous thought and noble feeling, as the sun and rain foster your favourite flowers. Cherish kind wishes, my children; for a time may come when you may be enabled to put them in practice.

... they know little of the passions who seek to argue with that most intractable of them all, the fear that is born of love.

I do not think very highly of Madame D'Arblay's books. The style is so strutting. She does so stalk about on Dr. Johnson's old stilts.

I have still the best comforts of life - books and friendships - and I trust never to lose my relish for either.

Well, great authors are great people - but I believe that they are best seen at a distance.

To think of playing cricket for hard cash! Money and gentility would ruin any pastime under the sun.

She was the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly ever.