The use of knowledge in our sex (beside the amusement of solitude) is to moderate the passions and learn to be contented with a small expense, which are the certain effects of a studious life and, it may be, preferable even to that fame which men have engrossed to themselves and will not suffer us to share.

I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world, than in following our own inclinations.

People wish their enemies dead - but I do not; I say give them the gout, give them the stone!

We should ask, not who is the most learned, but who is the best learned.

Time has the same effect on the mind as on the face; the predominant passion and the strongest feature become more conspicuous from the others retiring.

Only a mother knows a mother's fondness.

We are apt to consider Shakespeare only as a poet; but he was certainly one of the greatest moral philosophers that ever lived.