To be a good mother, a woman must have sense, and that independence of mind which few women possess who are taught to depend entirely on their husbands. Meek wives are, in general, foolish mothers; wanting their children to love them best, and take their part, in secret, against the father, who is held up as a scarecrow.

Perhaps the seeds of false-refinement, immorality, and vanity, have ever been shed by the great. Weak, artificial beings, raised above the common wants and defections of their race, in a premature and unnatural manner, undermine the very foundation of virtue, and spread corruption through the whole mass of society!

Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness.

Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.

An immoderate fondness for dress, for pleasure, and for sway, are the passions of savages; the passions that occupy those uncivilized beings who have not yet extended the dominion of the mind, or even learned to think with the energy necessary to concatenate that abstract train of thought which produces principles.... that women from their education and the present state of civilized life, are in the same condition, cannotbe controverted.

Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream.

The graceful ivy, clasping the oak that supported it, would form a whole in which strength and beauty would be equally conspicuous.