“Thus do we wish as we float down the stream of life, whilst chance does more to gratify our desire for knowledge than our best-laid plans.”

My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.

How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?

She would stand and behold the waves rolling, and think of the voice that could still the tumultuous deep.

Every glance afforded colouring for the picture she was delineating on her heart.

Let their faculties have room to unfold, and their virtues to gain strength, and then determine where the whole sex must stand in the intellectual scale.

Solitude and reflection are necessary to give to wishes the force of passions.

Modesty, temperance, and self-denial, are the sober offspring of reason.

How much more respectable is the woman who earns her own bread by fulfilling any duty, than the most accomplished beauty!

They are the men of fancy, the favourites of the sex, who outwardly respect, and inwardly despise the weak creatures whom they thus sport with.

It may be impossible to convince women that the illegitimate power which they obtain by degrading themselves is a curse.

Pope’s summary of their character to be just, that every woman is at heart a rake.

Rousseau exerts himself to prove that all was right originally: a crowd of authors that all is now right: and I, that all will be right.

As sound politics diffuse liberty, mankind, including woman, will become more wise and virtuous.

And if then women do not resign the arbitrary power of beauty – they will prove that they have less mind than man.

Men who are inferior to their fellow men, are always most anxious to establish their superiority over women.

She was created to be the toy of man, his rattle, and it must jingle in his ears whenever, dismissing reason, he chooses to be amused.

When we kiss my heart’s on fire, burning with a strange desire.

I am not ashamed of anything – not my past, not my affairs, not my body, and most definitely not my desire.

Physics said I was born with a strong desire to love.

I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.

There is a deep desire in everyone to commit suicide for the simple reason, that life seems to be meaningless.

Freedom is the intrinsic desire of each man, each woman – utter freedom, absolute freedom.

Chess has this in common with making poetry; that the desire for it comes upon the amateur in gusts.

Existence cannot go wrong. If it does not fulfill our desires, that simply means our desires were wrong.