In the career of female fame, there are few prizes to tie obtained which can vie with the obscure state of a beloved wife or a happy mother.

The platform or the altar of love may be analyzed and explained; it is constructed of virtue, beauty, and affection. Such is the pyre, such is the offering; but the ethereal spark must come from heaven, that lights the sacrifice.

Compulsion hardly restores right; love yields all things.

If cowardice were not so completely a coward as to be unable to look steadily upon the effects of courage, he would find that there is no refuge so sure as dauntless valor.

I never yet heard man or woman much abused, that I was not inclined to think the better of them; and to transfer any suspicion or dislike, to the person who appeared to take delight in pointing out the defects of a fellow-creature.

Happiness is a sunbeam which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray; nay, when it strikes on a kindred heart, like the converged light on a mirror, it reflects itself with redoubled brightness. It is not perfected till it is shared.

Any base heart can devise means of vileness, and affix the ugly shapings of its own fancy to the actions of those around him; but it requires loftiness of mind, and the heaven-born spirit of virtue, to imagine greatness where it is not, and to deck the sordid objects of nature in the beautiful robes of loveliness and light.