No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly...and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it.

Ceaseless as the interminable voices of the bell-cricket, all night till dawn my tears flow.

It is useless to talk with those who do not understand one and troublesome to talk with those who criticize from a feeling of superiority. Especially one-sided persons are troublesome. Few are accomplished in many arts and most cling narrowly to their own opinion.

How much the more in judging of the human heart should we distrust all fashionable airs and graces, all tricks and smartness, learnt only to please the outward gaze

No penance can your hard heart find save such as you long since have taught me to endure

How strange a thing is the heart of man!

Stepmothers in books usually behave very spitefully towards the children entrusted to them. But he was now learning by his own experience that in real life this does not always happen.