On the wings of fancy, gentle readers, bear yourselves into the mid-air, where by imagination you may form a large stupendous castle.

[F]or as Socrates says that a wise man is a citizen of the world, so I thought that a wise woman was equally at liberty to range through every station or degree of men, to fix her choice wherever she pleased.

The supposition that it was possible for any woman to be so mean-spirited as not at least to wish to tear out her rival's eyes was too hard for the digestion of the Cry.

But in all things whether we shall make only a due use of the liberties we have asked, is left entirely to the judicious reader to decide.

I fancied I had some constancy of mind because I could bear my own sufferings, but found through the sufferings of others I could be weakened like a child.

If modesty and candor are necessary to an author in his judgment of his own works, no less are they in his reader.

I believe no gentleman would like to have his family affairs neglected because his wife was filling her head with crotchets and pothooks, and who, because she understood a few scraps of Latin, valued that more than minding her needle or providing her husband's dinner.