To wheedle and coax is safer than to command.

To regret the exchange of earthly pleasures for the joys of Heaven, is as if the grovelling caterpillar should lament that it must one day quit the nibbled leaf to soar aloft and flutter through the air, roving at will from flower to flower, sipping sweet honey from their cups, or basking in their sunny petals.

[Preface to second edition:] ... I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be.

I am truly miserable - more so than I like to acknowledge to myself. Pride refuses to aid me. It has brought me into the scrape, and will not help me out of it.

Are you hero enough to unite yourself to one whom you know to be suspected and despised by all around you, and identify your interests and your honor with hers?

What the world stigmatizes as romantic is often more nearly allied to the truth than is commonly supposed.

I cannot love a man who cannot protect me.