To those who know thee not, no words can paint! And those who know thee, know all words are faint!

parents are too apt to mistake inclination for genius.

All reformations seem formidable before they are attempted.

Affliction is the school in which great virtues are acquired, in which great characters are formed.

The education of the present race of females is not very favorable to domestic happiness. For my own part, I call education, not that which smothers a woman with accomplishments, but that which tends to consolidate a firm and regular system of character; that which tends to form a friend, a companion, and a wife.

My retirement was now become solitude; the former is, I believe, the best state for the mind of man, the latter almost the worst. In complete solitude, the eye wants objects, the heart wants attachments, the understanding wants reciprocation. The character loses its tenderness when it has nothing to strengthen it, its sweetness when it has nothing to soothe it.

Where bright imagination reigns, the fine-wrought spirit feels acuter pains.