“You will find as the children grow up that as a rule children are a bitter disappointment – their greatest object being to do precisely what their parents do not wish and have anxiously tried to prevent.”

The danger to the country, to Europe, to her vast Empire, which is involved in having all these great interests entrusted to the shaking hand of an old, wild, and incomprehensible man of 82, is very great!

I positively think that ladies who are always enceinte quite disgusting; it is more like a rabbit or guinea-pig than anything else and really it is not very nice.

An ugly baby is a very nasty object – and the prettiest is frightful.

We will not have failure – only success and new learning.

Bring me a cup of tea and the ‘Times.’

I would venture to warn against too great intimacy with artists as it is very seductive and a little dangerous.

I think people really marry far too much; it is such a lottery after all, and for a poor woman a very doubtful happiness.

I am every day more convinced that we women, if we are to be good women, feminine and amiable and domestic, are not fitted to reign; at least it is they that drive themselves to the work which it entails.

That Book, the Bible, accounts for the supremacy of England. England has become great & happy by the knowledge of the true God through Jesus Christ.

Being pregnant is an occupational hazard of being a wife.

[On same-sex marriage:] No woman would do that.

Being married gives one one’s position like nothing else can.

Were women to “unsex” themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen, and disgusting of beings and would surely perish without male protection.

Give my people plenty of beer, good beer, and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them.

Nothing will turn a man’s home into a castle more quickly and effectively than a dachshund.

Just close your eyes—and think of England.

If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.

When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning.

Perhaps my children will live in stone houses and walled towns -Not I.

Dear Child of God, I am sorry to say that suffering is not optional.

Do things that light up the child in you. Do things that make you feel honest and true.

Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’t, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me, Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.

It’s important to give a better country to your children, but it is more important to give better children to your country.

One of the problems with being relatively wealthy if you are a parent is that you cannot provide your children with necessity.