Fashion is a capricious deity.

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

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

Nothing so pretty to look at as my garden!

Autumn glows upon us like a splendid evening; it is the very sunset of the year.

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.

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.