Books are a languid pleasure.

Valor is strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul; it consists not in the worth of our horse or our weapons, but in our own.

And one might therefore say of me that in this book I have only made up a bunch of other people's flowers, and that of my own I have only provided the string that ties them together.

Every day I hear stupid people say things that are not stupid.

Indeed, there is no such thing as an altogether ugly woman — or altogether beautiful.

We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game.

But as Nature is the best guide, teaching must be the development of natural inclinations, for which purpose the teacher must watch his pupil and listen to him, not continually bawl words into his ears as if pouring water into a funnel. Good teaching will come from a mind well made rather than well filled.