If you like poetry let it be first rate, Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith Pope (if you will though I don't admire him), Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth and Southey. Now Ellen don't be startled at the names of Shakespeare, and Byron. Both these were great Men and their works are like themselves, You will know how to chuse the good and avoid the evil, the finest
passages are always the purest, the bad are invariably revolting you will never wish to read them over twice.

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

They will both be happy, and I do not grudge them their bliss; but I groan under my own misery: some of my suffering is very acute. Truly, I ought not to have been born: they should have smothered me at first cry.

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

Neither birth nor sex forms a limit to genius.

[O]ur honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine.

I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here.