“A little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children.”

“A doll is among the most pressing needs as well as the most charming instincts of feminine childhood. To care for it, adorn it, dress and undress it, give it lessons, scold it a little, put it to bed and sing it to sleep, pretend that the object is a living person - all the future of the woman resides in this. Dreaming and murmuring, tending, cossetting, sewing small garments, the child grows into girlhood, from girlhood into womanhood, from womanhood into wifehood, and the first baby is the successor of the last doll. A little girl without a doll is nearly as deprived and quite as unnatural as a woman without a child.”

“Is she become a rag doll? Are the wolves become children? It seems quite possible, there on the twilight fringes of dying. With some faint spark of herself, the little girl holds on to the idea. Even a rag doll has more life than does a dying child.”

“Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all.”

“I can imagine a life without you, but it seems impossible dreary, imperfect, unhappy.”

“The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burden in silence. Without this silence, happiness would be impossible.”