I have noticed that the Christianity of a certain class of respectable people begins when they open their prayer-books at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, and ends when they shut them up again at one o'clock on Sunday afternoon. Nothing so astonishes and insults Christians of this sort as reminding them of their Christianity on a week-day.

No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.

The books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill!

I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.

I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.

But, ah me! where is the faultless human creature who can persevere in a good resolution, without sometimes failing and falling back?

Yes! the books - the generous friends who met me without suspicion - the merciful masters who never used me ill! The only years of my life that I can look back on with something like pride... Early and late, through the long winter nights and the quiet summer days, I drank at the fountain of knowledge, and never wearied of the draught.