What a world is this! What is there in it desirable? The good we hope for so strangely mixed, that one knows not what to wish for!And one half of mankind tormenting the other, and being tormented themselves in tormenting!

The life of a good man was a continual warfare with his passions.

A man who flatters a woman hopes either to find her a fool or to make her one.

A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive.

Of what violences, murders, depredations, have not the epic poets, from all antiquity, been the occasion, by propagating false honor, false glory, and false religion?

Be sure don't let people's telling you, you are pretty, puff you up; for you did not make yourself, and so can have no praise due to you for it. It is virtue and goodness only, that make the true beauty.

There would be no supporting life were we to feel quite as poignantly for others as we do for ourselves.