It is the rank and file - the average woman - for whom the world has opened up so astonishingly.

I loved nearly all my teachers; but it was not till I went home to live at Oxford, in 1867, that I awoke intellectually to a hundred interests and influences that begin much earlier nowadays to affect any clever child.

For nine years, till the spring of 1881, we lived in Oxford, in a little house north of the Parks, in what was then the newest quarter of the University town.

As far as intellectual training was concerned, my nine years from seven to sixteen were practically wasted.

But no man has a monopoly of conscience.

We believed that growth through Local Government, and perhaps through some special machinery for bringing the wishes and influence of women of all classes to bear on Parliament, other than the Parliamentary vote, was the real line of progress.

English girls' schools today providing the higher education are, so far as my knowledge goes, worthily representative of that astonishing rise in the intellectual standards of women which has taken place in the last half-century.

But the mind travels far - and mysteriously - in sleep.

It is the rank and file - the average woman - for whom the world has opened up so astonishingly.

It became plain very soon after our marriage that ours was to be a literary partnership.

My grandmother made her home at Fox How under the shelter of the fells, with her four daughters, the youngest of whom was only eight when their father died.

So as the years draw on toward the Biblical limit, the inclination to look back, and to tell some sort of story of what one has seen, grows upon most of us.

I wanted to show how a man of sensitive and noble character, born for religion, comes to throw off the orthodoxies of his day and moment, and to go out into the wilderness where all is experiment, and spiritual life begins again.

In this choice, as I look back over more than half a century, I can only follow - and trust - the same sort of instinct that one follows in the art of fiction.

I cannot hope that what I have to say will be very interesting to many.

The answer, of course, in the mouth of a Christian teacher is that in Christianity alone is there both present joy and future hope.

But a girl of seventeen is not always thinking of books, especially in the Oxford summer term.

Our children, two daughters and a son, were born in 1874, 1876, and 1879.

A modern girls' school, equipped as scores are now equipped throughout the country, was of course not to be found in 1858, when I first became a school boarder, or in 1867, when I ceased to be one.

How little those who are schoolgirls of today can realize what it was to be a schoolgirl in the fifties or the early sixties of the last century!

A life spent largely among books, and in the exercise of a literary profession, has very obvious drawbacks, as a subject-matter, when one comes to write about it.

For after my marriage I had made various attempts to write fiction. They were clearly failures.

Among my activities was membership in the Boy Scouts; I rose each year through the ranks, eventually achieving the rank of Eagle Scout and undertaking leadership roles in the organization.

No age, sex, or condition is above or below the absolute necessity of modesty; but without it one is vastly beneath the rank of man.

Those who enjoy their own emotionally bad health and who habitually fill their own minds with the rank poisons of suspicion, jealousy and hatred, as a rule take umbrage at those who refuse to do likewise, and they find a perverted relief in trying to denigrate them.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave.

Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.

Marriage, it seems, confines every man to his proper rank.

To work with the hands or brain, according to our requirements and our capacities, to do that which lies before us to do, is more honorable than rank and title.

Now, we occupy a lowly position, both in space and rank in comparison with the heavenly sphere, and the Almighty is Most High not in space, but with respect to absolute existence, greatness and power.

Even at the United Nations, where legend has it that the building was designed so that there could be no corner offices, the expanse of glass in individual offices is said to be a dead giveaway as to rank. Five windows are excellent, one window not so great.

Great men are usually the products of their times and one of the men developed by these times takes rank with the greatest railroad leaders in history.

Between Scott on the earlier side and Dickens and Thackeray on the other, there was an immense production of novels, illustrated by not a few names which should rank high in the second class, while some would promote more than one of them to the first.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

High rank and soft manners may not always belong to a true heart.

I joined the army as a private. I was offered a rank at that time, but I refused. I preferred to remain a private. First of all, I wasn't taken by ranks, and before I knew it, they put me in the most sensitive positions anyway.

Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts - as the one which, more than any other, ministers to the human spirit.

I used to pull rank and wait until the wind was blowing out.

I would first recommend we appoint a Police Director that commands the respect of the rank and file.

The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labor employed in it, or the mental pleasure in producing it.

Under the Geneva Convention, for example, a POW is required only to provide name, rank, and serial number and cannot receive any benefits for cooperating.

I will accept no commission that would tend to create a rivalry with Grant. I want him to hold what he has earned and got. I have all the rank I want.

Archbishop - A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.

Success isn't measured by money or power or social rank. Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace.

When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

If I had to rank my skills, I have a long way to go before I can write a good graphic novel.

All was well, until I reached the port of Havre. Three officers with the rank of lieutenant, whom afterwards I knew to be Scotland Yard men, came aboard and demanded to see my papers which they took away from me.