Nature has not placed us in an inferior rank to men, no more than the females of other animals, where we see no distinction of capacity, though I am persuaded if there was a commonwealth of rational horses... it would be an established maxim amongst them that a mare could not be taught to pace.

You can be pleased with nothing if you are not pleased with yourself.

Nature is indeed a specious ward, nay, there is a great deal in it if it is properly understood and applied, but I cannot bear to hear people using it to justify what common sense must disavow. Is not Nature modifed by art in many things? Was it not designed to be so? And is it not happy for human society that it is so? Would you like to see your husband let his beard grow, until he would be obliged to put the end of it in his pocket, because this beard is the gift of Nature?

I have never had any great esteem for the generality of the fair sex, and my only consolation for being of that gender has been the assurance it gave me of never being married to any one among them.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.

The knowledge of numbers is one of the chief distinctions between us and the brutes.

I am afraid we are little better than straws upon the water; we may flatter ourselves that we swim, when the current carries us along.