Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.

There is nothing more dreadful to an author than neglect; compared with which reproach, hatred, and opposition are names of happiness; yet this worst, this meanest fate, every one who dares to write has reason to fear.

It is much easier not to write like a man than to write like a woman.

We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends; this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none.

Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favour.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another.