I wished critics would judge me as an author, not as a woman.

There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.

It is strange,' pursued he, 'that while I love Rosomond Oliver so wildly-with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the object of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, and fascinating--I experience at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness, that she would not make me a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months' rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know.

The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.

What have I to do with millions [of people]? The eighty I know despise me.

Life is so constructed, that the event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.

I would always rather be happy than dignified.