The being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason.

[I]f we revert to history, we shall find that the women who have distinguished themselves have neither been the most beautiful nor the most gentle of their sex.

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!

Good habits, imperceptibly fixed, are far preferable to the precepts of reason.

In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason.

Love, from its very nature, must be transitory.

...I scarcely am able to govern my muscles, when I see a man start with eager, and serious solicitude, to lift a handkerchief, orshut a door, when the lady could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two.