"Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other."

"Few are the giants of the soul who actually feel that the human race is their family circle."

"Curiosity is the one thing invincible in Nature."

"Pain and fear and hunger are effects of causes which can be foreseen and known: but sorrow is a debt which someone else makes for us."

"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do."

"The great and almost only comfort about being a woman is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is and no one is surprised."

"Christmas... is not an external event at all, but a piece of one's home that one carries in one's heart."

"If we are strong, and have faith in life and its richness of surprises, and hold the rudder steadily in our hands. I am sure we will sail into quiet and pleasent waters for our old age."

"To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world."