“On the whole, school work was a deadly uninteresting, and therefore unprofitable, business in my time, no matter what the qualifications of teachers.”

Her criticism of education that failed because it failed to engage the learner · Memoir, The Retrospect (1912)

• Childhood
• Truth

“If one could throw delicate scruples to the winds and tell the whole story of any human life, or portion of life, however small, the long reign of the work of fiction would be over.”

Suggesting that ordinary lives contain material richer than invented stories · Memoir, The Retrospect (1912)

• Art
• Time
• Truth

“She, too, I never saw before or since—it was indeed a case of ships that pass in the night—but I have loved her always, and thought of her as a life-long friend.”

Recognising how a brief encounter can acquire the permanence of friendship · Memoir, Thirty Years in Australia (1903)

• Friendship
• Love
• Memory