No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions nor regret the loss of expensive diversions or variety of company if she can be amused with an author in her closet.

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.

I have all my life been on my guard against the information conveyed by the sense of hearing -- it being one of my earliest observations, the universal inclination of humankind is to be led by the ears, and I am sometimes apt to imagine that they are given to men as they are to pitchers, purposely that they may be carried about by them.

While conscience is our friend, all is at peace; however once it is offended, farewell to a tranquil mind.

Only a mother knows a mother's fondness.

Men are vile inconstant toads.

Strictly speaking, there is but one real evil: I mean acute pain. All other complaints are so considerably diminished by time that it is plain the grief is owing to our passion, since the sensation of it vanishes when that is over.