My dear Smollett ... disgraces his talent by writing those stupid romances called history.

I regard almost all quarrels of princes on the same footing, and I see nothing that marks man's unreason so positively as war. Indeed, what folly to kill one another for interests often imaginary, and always for the pleasure of persons who do not think themselves even obliged to those who sacrifice themselves for them!

My health is so often impaired that I begin to be as weary of it as mending old lace; when it is patched in one place, it breaks out in another.

The one thing that reconciles me to the fact of being a woman is the reflection that it delivers me from the necessity of being married to one.

I know a love may be revived which absence, inconstancy, or even infidelity has extinguished, but there is no returning from a dTgovt given by satiety.

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

Begin nothing without considering what the end may be.