such is the effect of true politeness, that it banishes all restraint and embarassment.

In England, I was quite struck to see how forward the girls are made--a child of 10 years old, will chat and keep you company, while her parents are busy or out etc.--with the ease of a woman of 26. But then, how does this education go on?--Not at all: it absolutely stops short.

Unused to the situations in which I find myself, and embarassed by the slightest difficulties, I seldom discover, till too late, how I ought to act.

Generosity without delicacy, like wit without judgment, generally gives as much pain as pleasure.

When young people are too rigidly sequestered from [the world], their lively and romantic imaginations paint it to them as a paradise of which they have been beguiled; but when they are shown it properly, and in due time, they see it such as it really is, equally shared by pain and pleasure, hope and disappointment.

There is something in age that ever, even in its own despite, must be venerable, must create respect and to have it ill treated, is to me worse, more cruel and wicked than anything on earth

You must learn not only to judge but to act for yourself.