The ultimate end of your education was to make you a good wife.

I wish you would moderate that fondness you have for your children. I do not mean you should abate any part of your care, or not do your duty to them in its utmost extent, but I would have you early prepare yourself for disappointments, which are heavy in proportion to their being surprising.

Take back the beauty and wit you bestow upon me; leave me my own mediocrity of agreeableness and genius, but leave me also my sincerity, my constancy, and my plain dealing; 'Tis all I have to recommend me to the esteem either of others or myself.

Begin nothing without considering what the end may be.

It was formerly a terrifying view to me that I should one day be an old woman. I now find that Nature has provided pleasures for every state.

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.

Remember my unalterable maxim, "When we love, we always have something to say.