all daughters, even when most aggravated by their mothers, have a secret respect for them. They believe perhaps that they can do everything better than their mothers can, and many things they can do better, but they have not yet lived long enough to be sure how successfully they will meet the major emergencies of life, which lie, sometimes quite creditably, behind their mothers.

A blossom must break the sheath it has been sheltered by.

Jane had that happy disposition which would like to imagine that every one really wishes the well-being of his neighbour and struggles, though sometimes rather disastrously, to help him towards it.

... can life be made undignified by any act of man?

artists are exposed to great temptations: their eyes see paradise before their souls have reached it, and that is a great danger.

It is you men who make war! ... We, who have children, would never make it! Why should a woman be broken up in pain, to give her child life, only to see him carried away from her, to make food for guns?

If a writer is true to his characters they will give him his plot. Observations must play second fiddle to integrity.