“With opportunity the world is very interesting.”

Don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.

In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets.

Everything was romantic in my imagination.

It sometimes happens that the town child is more alive to the fresh beauty of the country than a child who is country born

All outward forms of religion are almost useless, and are the causes of endless strife.

Then Mrs. Tiggy-winkle made tea – a cup for herself and a cup for Lucie. They sat before the fire on a bench and looked sideways at one another.

Sunday, January 27, 1884. — There was another story in the paper a week or so since.

The woods were peopled by the mysterious good folk. The Lords and Ladies of the last century walked with me along the overgrown paths, and picked the old fashioned flowers among the box and rose hedges of the garden.

The shorter and the plainer the better.

We cannot stay home all our lives, we must present ourselves to the world and we must look upon it as an adventure.

There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.

I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child.

Peter was not very well during the evening. His mother put him to bed, and made some chamomile tea: “One table-spoonful to be taken at bedtime.

I hold an old-fashioned notion that a happy marriage is the crown of a woman’s life.

Thank God I have the seeing eye, that is to say, as I lie in bed I can walk step by step on the fells and rough land seeing every stone and flower and patch of bog and cotton pass where my old legs will never take me again.

I think prejudice and tradition count for three-quarters in matters of religion.