“But he remembered that even if she did box his ears, he musn't box hers again, for she was a girl, and all that boys must do, if girls are rude, is to go away and leave them.”

“But in truth there was more expression in the flower than was yet in the face. The flower expressed what God was thinking of when He made it; the face, what the girl was thinking of her self. When she ceased thinking of herself, then, like the flower, she would show what God was thinking of when he made her.”

“What a good thing, for instance, it was that one princess should sleep for a hundred years! Was she not saved from all the plague of young men who were not worthy of her? And did not she come awake exactly at the right moment when the right prince kissed her? For my part, I cannot help wishing a good many girls would sleep till just the same fate overtook them. It would be happier for them, and more agreeable to their friends.”

“Why don't you go on, Mother dear?' he asked. 'It's such nonsense!' said his mother. 'I believe it would go on for ever.' 'That's just what it did,' said Diamond.' 'What did?' she asked.' 'Why, the river. That's almost the very tune it used to sing.”

“The boy should enclose and keep, as his life, the old child at the heart of him, and never let it go. He must still, to be a right man, be his mother's darling, and more, his father's pride, and more. The child is not meant to die, but to be forever fresh born.”

“Here I should like to remark, for the sake of princes and princesses in general, that it is a low and contemptible thing to refuse to confess a fault, or even an error. If a true princess has done wrong, she is always uneasy until she has had an opportunity of throwing the wrongness away from her by saying: 'I did it; and I wish I had not; and I am sorry for having done it.”

“Her heart - like every heart, if only its fallen sides were cleared away - was an inexhaustible fountain of love: she loved everything she saw. ”