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

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.

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.

What we call the highest and the lowest in nature are both equally perfect. A willow bush is as beautiful as the human form divine.

One day puss did not take his place punctually, but presently appeared with two mice, one of which it placed on its master’s plate, the other on its own.

Peter lost one of his shoes among the cabbages, and the other shoe amongst the potatoes.

I have just made stories to please myself, because I never grew up.

The place is changed now, and many familiar faces are gone, but the greatest change is myself.

I’ve never had to fend for a child’s life, which sounds very terrifying.

How defeated and restless the child that is not doing something in which it sees a purpose, a meaning! It is by its self-directed activity that the child, as years pass, finds its work, the thing it wants to do and for which it finally is willing to deny itself pleasure, ease, even sleep and comfort.

Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.

I am ready to obey as a child; :;but, not being a child, I think I ought to have a reason.

A child understands fear, and the hurt and hate it brings.

People wanted to make products based on our child’s name, and you don’t want anybody trying to benefit off your baby’s name.

We live in the richest country in the world. There’s plenty and to spare for no man, woman, or child to be in want.

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said – and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded – ‘It’s like hair color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.’ This was a very healthy attitude.