Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.

I'm just going to write because I cannot help it.

It does good to no woman to be flattered [by a man] who does not intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, ignis-fatuus-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.

It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment.

I mean that I value vision, and dread being struck stone blind.

For those who are not hungry, it is easy to palaver about the degradation of charity.

Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life.