Life cannot be seen by an unmoved spectator.

For years I have endeavored to calm an impetuous tide -- laboring to make my feelings take an orderly course -- it was striving against the stream.

Love from its very nature must be transitory. To seek for a secret that would render it constant would be as wild a search as for the philosopher’s stone or the grand panacea: and the discovery would be equally useless, or rather pernicious to mankind. The most holy band of society is friendship.

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

There must be more equality established in society, or morality will never gain ground, and this virtuous equakity will not rest firmly even when founded on a rock, if one half of mankind be chained to its bottom by fate, for they will be continually undermining it through ignorance or pride

Society can only be happy and free in proportion as it is virtuous.

... the whole tenour of female education ... tends to render the best disposed romantic and inconstant; and the remainder vain and mean.