“Either nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the world is not yet anywhere near to being fully civilized.”

The appetites will rule if the mind is vacant.

The honour of the woman is not made even to depend on her will.

It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men.

Virtue flies from a house divided against itself—and a whole legion of devils take up their residence there.

I do not wish them women to have power over men; but over themselves.

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s sculpture the mind shapes itself to the body and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

True sensibility, the sensibility which is the auxiliary of virtue, and the soul of genius, is in society so occupied with the feelings of others, as scarcely to regard its own sensations.

Let woman share the rights, and she will emulate the virtues of man; for she must grow more perfect when emancipated, or justify the authority that chains such a weak being to her duty.

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to their sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

Few, I believe, have had much affection for mankind, who did not first love their parents, their brothers, sisters, and even the domestic brutes, whom they first played with.

We must all be in love once in our lives.

The man who had some virtue whilst he was struggling for a crown, often becomes a voluptuous tyrant when it graces his brow.

Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time.

I gazed around with rapture, and felt more of that spontaneous pleasure which gives credibility to our expectation of happiness than I had for a long, long time before.

Men of genius and talents have started out of a class, in which women have never yet been placed.

Some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.

If A denotes one of the two constant traits, for example, the dominating one, a the recessive, and the Aa the hybrid form in which both are united, then the expression: gives the series for the progeny of plants hybrid in a pair of differing traits.

One can state, without exaggeration, that the observation of and the search for similarities and differences are the basis of all human knowledge.

I have not looked at a newspaper in twenty years; if one is brought into the room, I flee. This is not because I am indifferent but because one cannot follow every road.

I just want to make people happy and make a difference in people’s lives.

I think there is a huge difference between writers who have very big sales, and writers who have small sales. Even writers with very high reputations, even Nobel prize winners, often sell in very low figures.

What is the difference between my life and my love? One gets me low, the other lets me go.

Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.

Talent perceives differences; genius, unity.