"It seems to me that a great secret of early education is not to overrate the powers of attention in children. If they go to a church for instance, where there are long sermons, I should let them have scripture history, or lives of the Saints full of pictures, to be administered during the latter half of the discourse, rather than knuckle their ribs or prick them with pins, to make them "attend to what the gentleman says."

“Rural poetry is the pleasure ground of those who live in cities.”

“I don't suffer much from solitude in the evenings. I spring upon my books. I always spoke a good word for solitude, and it is grateful to me. Books ward off the ghastly thoughts.”

“The "rights of man" are the right of the less voracious to restrain those who are more so.”

“The rights of the poor majority are pure air and pure water, and sufficient space to walk about in, when the rich minority are befouling the air with manufactories, poisoning the rivers, and as in the neighborhood of Foots Cray and St. Mary's, adding "field to field, till there be no place" left, and the villagers cannot step out of the dusty high-road without a trespass..”

“I hope to begin a new plan... not sitting down to local matter but walking and watching.”

“When less than four years old I was standing with my nurse, Mary Ward, watching the shadows on the wall from branches of an elm behind which the moon had risen. I have never forgot those shadows and am often trying to paint them.”