Simplicity and sincerity generally go hand in hand, as both proceed from a love of truth.

Hereditary property sophisticates the mind, and the unfortunate victims to it ... swathed from their birth, seldom exert the locomotive faculty of body or mind; and, thus viewing every thing through one medium, and that a false one, they are unable to discern in what true merit and happiness consist.

It is the preservation of the species, not of individuals, which appears to be the design of Deity throughout the whole of nature.

What, but the rapacity of the only men who exercised their reason, the priests, secured such vast property to the church, when a man gave his perishable substance to save himself from the dark torments of purgatory.

I think I love most people best when they are in adversity; for pity is one of my prevailing passions.

Let not men then in the pride of power, use the same arguments that tyrannic kings and venal ministers have used, and fallaciously assert that women ought to be subjected because she has always been so.... It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity.... It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.

Modesty is the graceful, calm virtue of maturity; bashfulness the charm of vivacious youth.