I’ll be left writing picture books and fairy tales.

Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire – in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I...

The ‘good old times’ – all times when old are good.

Man’s love is of man’s life a part; it is a woman’s whole existence. In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.

The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.

‘Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it.

Between 9am and 3pm is when I work most intensely.

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.

Men are the sport of circumstances when it seems circumstances are the sport of men.

American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.

Christmas is taken very seriously in this household. I believe in Father Christmas, and there’s no way I’d do anything to undermine that belief.

Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of Good in his main-spring of Mind. But God help us all! It is at present a sad jar...

Where there is mystery, it is generally suspected there must also be evil.

I do detest everything which is not perfectly mutual.

A mistress never is nor can be a friend. While you agree, you are lovers; and when it is over, anything but friends.

Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore.

Every day is a gift with a child, no matter what problems you have.

It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time.

To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a twin.

And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?

Edinburgh is my favourite city. We’ll be doing a lot of children’s theatre and galleries.

Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.

I cannot help thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains.

In England the only homage which they pay to Virtue – is hypocrisy.

The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity.

A thousand years may scare form a state. An hour may lay it in ruins.

I write in that space between Ella’s childhood and mine. I know it all sounds a bit sinister.

There is no instinct like that of the heart.

Fame is the thirst of youth.

Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.

Poetry and prayer are very similar.

Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.

Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.

As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for Nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other passions and resist or endure those of others.

For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave nothing that claims a tear.

The poor dog, in life the firmest friend. The first to welcome, foremost to defend.

I still read Donne, particularly his love poems.

I am about to be married, and am of course in all the misery of a man in pursuit of happiness.

A woman should never be seen eating or drinking, unless it be lobster salad and Champagne, the only true feminine and becoming viands.

None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser...

When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else’s. It’s like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn’t know was there, full of treasure and light.

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!

Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers.

I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.

One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if once mine gets out, I’ll have a...

Who loves, raves.

I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.

Out of chaos God made a world, and out of high passions comes a people.

Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and...