“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.”

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.

If then women are not a swarm of ephemeron triflers, why should they be kept in ignorance under the specious name of innocence?

To desire is to obtain to aspire is to achieve.

Revolutionary action more often than not was a theatrical concession to the desires of violently discontented masses rather than an actual battle for power.

The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.

If your real desire is to be good, there is no need to wait for the money before you do it; you can do it now, this very moment, and just where you are.

I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa; there are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there.

When a man makes his thoughts pure, he no longer desires impure food.

A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.