The love of solitude, when cultivated in the morn of life, elevates the mind to a noble independence, but to acquire the advantages which solitude is capable of affording, the mind must not be impelled to it by melancholy and discontent, but by a real distaste to the idle pleasures of the world, a rational contempt for the deceitful joys of life, and just apprehensions of being corrupted and seduced by its insinuating and destructive gayeties.

Contempt is frequently regulated by fashion.

Novels do not force their fair readers to sin, they only instruct them how to sin; the consequences of which are fully detailed, and not in a way calculated to seduce any but weak but weak minds; few of their heroines are happily disposed of.

Laugh as loud as you please at your companion's wit; do not even smile at his folly.

Hunger is the mother of impatience and anger.

Those beings only are fit for solitude who are like nobody, and are liked by nobody.

Never suffer the prejudice of the eye to determine the heart.