I suppose the pleasure of the country life lies really in the eternally renewed evidences of the determination to live. That is a truism when said, but anything but a truism when daily observed. Nothing shows up the difference between the thing said or read, so much as the daily experience of it.

Flowers really do intoxicate me.

There is nothing more lovely in life than the union of two people whose love for one another has grown through the years, from the small acorn of passion, into a great rooted tree

Women, like men, ought to have their years so glutted with freedom that they hate the very idea of freedom.

For a young man to start his career with a love affair with an older woman was quite de rigueur ... Of course, it must not go on for too long. An apprenticeship was a very different thing from a career.

Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action should make up the sum of a man's life.

For bees are captious folk / And quick to turn against the lubber's touch.