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

I only want an easy mind, sir; not crushed by crowded obligations.

...it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.

Memory in youth is active and easily impressible; in old age it is comparatively callous to new impressions, but still retains vividly those of earlier years.

Better to try all things and find all empty, than to try nothing and leave your life a blank.

Intelligence and proper education will give you independence of spirit.

I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, great and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.