“He grinned at her, and she grinned at him, and it seemed to Maria that suddenly the sun came out.”

“...The simple little words came easily, fitting themselves to the tune that had come out of the harpsichord. It didn't seem to her that she made them up at all. It seemed to her that they flew in from the rose-garden, through the open window, like a lot of butterflies, poised themselves on the point of her pen, and fell off it on to the paper.”

“What is the distinguishing mark of an aristocrat?' she asked him suddenly.'Reverence,' he replied.”

“Cleanliness', chuckled Sir Benjamin, noting his great niece's delighted smile as her eyes rested upon him, 'comes next to godliness, eh, Maria?”

“Robin: When you do marry, who will you marry?Maria: I have not quite decided yet, but I think I shall marry a boy I knew in London.Robin(yells): What? Marry some mincing nincompoop of a Londoner with silk stockings and a pomade in his hair and face like a Cheshire cheese? You dare do such a thing! You - Maria - if you marry a London man I'll wring his neck! (...) I'll not only wring his neck, I'll wring everybody's necks, and I'll go right away out of the valley, over the hills to the town where my father came from, and I won't ever come back here again. So there!(...)Maria: Why don't you want me to marry that London boy?Robin(shouting): Because you are going to marry me. Do you hear, Maria? You are going to marry me.”

“..and looking up into Abednego's face she fought a battle inside herself with the thing that it was, a sort of grabbing thing, and then she held Gertrude out to him. "You have her," she said.”

“She realized with deep respect that this woman had always done what she had to do and faced what she had to face. If many of her fears and burdens would have seemed unreal to another woman, there was nothing unreal about her courage.”