“[On alcohol:] Total abstinence is an impossibility and it will not do to insist on it as a general practice.”

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.

When I think of a merry, happy, and free young girl – and look at the ailing aching state a young wife is generally doomed to – which you can’t deny is the penalty of marriage.

Oh! was ever woman so blessed as I am.