The power of admiring whatever is deserving of admiration, the nice and quick perception of the beautiful and the true, is one of the highest and noblest of our faculties, born of taste, and knowledge, and wisdom, or rather it is taste, and wisdom, and knowledge, in one rare and great combination.

I prepare myself for all disappointments by expecting nothing.

In our present high state of civilization, people are so much alike, that anything at all odd comes on one with the freshness and character of an antique coin among smooth shillings.

A novel should be as like life as a painting, but not as like life as a piece of waxwork.

[On Elizabeth Barrett Browning:] Her sweetness of character is even beyond her genius.

... 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 have discovered that our great favourite, Miss Austen, is my countrywoman...with whom mamma before her marriage was acquainted. Mamma says that she was then the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers...