Intimacy between stepchildren and stepparents is indeed proverbially difficult.

There is a tendency among men as well as women ... so soon as they have acquired a little knowledge of some kind, to want to display it to the best advantage.

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

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.

A night of endless dreams, inconsequent and wild, is this my life; none more worth telling than the rest.

In few people is discretion stronger than the desire to tell a good story.

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.