“To wish undone something you have done, to wish you could look back on kindness to someone you love, instead of on unkindness – that is a very terrible thing.”

Leave something for someone but dont leave someone for something.

Never lose that honesty, Bobby – always be honest with yourself, know your own motives for what they are, good or bad, make your own decisions firmly and justly – and you will be a fine, strong character, of some real use in this muddled world of ours!

They lay on their heathery beds and listened to all the sounds of the night. They heard the little grunt of a hedgehog going by.

The children gazed in delight. Nothing but trees and birds and little wild animals. Oh, what a secret island, all for their very own, to live on and play on.

The best way to treat obstacles is to use them as stepping-stones.

Well, you know what grown-ups are,’ said Dinah. ‘They don’t think the same way as we do.

Here Mr Potts come here you little idiot!

The point is not that I don’t recognise bad people when I see them – I grant you I may quite well be taken in by them – the point is that I know a good person when I see one.

It wasn’t a bit of good fighting grown-ups. They could do exactly as they liked.

Mothers and dogs both had a kind of second sight that made them see into people’s minds and know when anything unusual was going on.

You are honest enough by nature to be able to see and judge your own self clearly – and that is a great thing.

I get over a hundred letters a day from all over the world, from children and parents, and it’s a wonder I ever have time to write books, let alone speak!

If you can’t look after something in your care, you have no right to keep it.

The secret island had looked mysterious enough on the night they had seen it before – but now, swimming in the hot June haze, it seemed more enchanting than ever.

Make up your mind about things, by all means – but if something happens to show that you are wrong, then it is feeble not to change your mind,

We must have Christian ethics for our children, good and strong, but we must make them attractive, too, and it can be done.

Rebirth. I mean by this simply what happens when the child begins to realise the fact that the black does not enter through the white’s front door is not in the same category as the fact that the dead will never come back.

You don’t have that fear. So why do you think people get stuck in those boxes? It’s that fear of going back down.

I failed so many times and got back up. I got through the toughest times with my family, but I’m still standing.

That was a good fight back in the gym, he said. But i think you could benefit from a few more boxing lessons.

I’ll be firm,” i promised patch, adopting a no-nonsense expression. “no backing down.” by now patch was full-on grinning. He kissed me again, and i felt my mouth soften its resolve. “you look cute when you’re trying to be tough,” he said.

I hope we don’t have to keep going back over the same territory and winning the same rights over and over again. The battle for birth control. The battle for abortion.

To the lives that haven’t been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed.

Freedom is a loose leash, license to be different from your mother and still be loved…Freedom is…not insisting that your daughter share your limitations. Freedom also means letting your daughter reject you when she needs to and come back when she needs to. Freedom is unconditional love.