How little has situation to do with happiness. The happy individual uses their intelligence to realise things could be worse and therefore is grateful and happy. The unhappy individual does the opposite!

an old woman ... is a person who has no sense of decency; if once she takes to living, the devil himself can't get rid of her.

A youthful mind is seldom totally free from ambition; to curb that, is the first step to contentment, since to diminish expectation is to increase enjoyment.

Far from having taken any positive step, I have not yet even fommed any resolution.

Money is the source of the greatest vice, and that nation which is most rich, is most wicked.

I love and honour [Paulus Aemilius, in Plutarch's Lives], for his fondness for his children, which instead of blushing at, he avows and glories in: and that at an age, when almost all the heros and great men thought that to make their children and family a secondary concern, was the first proof of their superiority and greatness of soul.

I never pretend to be so superior a being as to be above having and indulging a hobby horse [her journal writing], and while I keep mine within due bounds and limits, nobody, I flatter myself, would wish to deprive me of the poor animal: to be sure, he is not formed for labour, and is rather lame and weak, but then the dear creature is faithful, constant, and loving, and though he sometimes prances, would not kick anyone into the mire, or hurt a single soul for the world--and I would not part with him for one who could win the greatest prize that ever was won at any races.