Don't assume you're always going to be understood. I wrote in a column that one should put a cup of liquid in the cavity of a turkey when roasting it. Someone wrote me that 'the turkey tasted great, but the plastic cup melted.

The name of mistress instead of wife would be dearer and more honourable for me, only love given freely, rather than the constriction of the marriage tie, is of significance to an ideal relationship.

Letters were first invented for consoling such solitary wretches as myself. Having lost the substantial pleasures of seeing and possessing you, I shall in some measure compensate this loss by the satisfaction I shall find in your writing.

the higher the step of advancement, the heavier is the fall.

When my self is not with you, it is nowhere.

What cannot letters inspire? They have souls; they can speak; they have in them all that force which expresses the transports of the heart.

The heart overwhelmed by grief knows no rest.