Mrs. Peterson was such a nice good mother! All mothers are more or less, but Mrs. Peterson was nice and good all more and no less. She made a little heaven in that poor cottage on the hillside—for her husband and son to go home to out of the dreary earth in which they worked ..... True, her hands were hard, and chapped, and large, but it was with work for them; and therefore in the sight of the angels, her hands were so much the more beautiful.
- George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin.