“The gravedigger's work is charming when done by a child.”

“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.”

“They were moments when she was suddenly reminded of her child, and perhaps also of the man she had loved; the breaking of links with the past is a painful thing.”

“Nothing is more charming than the glow of happiness amid squalor. There is a rose-tinted attic in all our lives.”

“Blessed be Providence which has given to each his toy: the doll to the child, the child to the woman, the woman to the man, the man to the devil.”

“Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. The writer doubles and trebles the power of writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people.”

“the goodness of the mother is written on the gaiety of the child.”