I place flowers in the very first rank of simple pleasures; and I have no very good opinion of the hard worldly people who take no delight in them.

Prejudices of taste, likings and dislikings, are not always vanquishable by reason.

I prepare myself for all disappointments by expecting nothing.

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

Our English people are much addicted to raising idols, and then revenging themselves on their own idolatry by knocking down and demolishing the poor bits of wood and stone that they had worshipped as gods. How many literary reputations have been so treated!

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

I have had a great misfortune; my dear old dog is dead.