“Simplicity and sincerity generally go hand in hand, as both proceed from a love of truth.”

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.

Let us eat, drink, and love for tomorrow we die, would be in fact the language of reason, the morality of life; and who but a fool would part with a reality for a fleeting shadow?

Only by the jostlings of equality can we form a just opinion of ourselves.

Men, indeed, appear to me to act in a very unphilosophical manner when they try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood.

Like the flowers that are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty.

The greater number of people take their opinions on trust, to avoid the trouble of exercising their own minds, and these indolent beings naturally adhere to the letter, rather than the spirit of a law, divine or human.

I never wanted but your heart-that gone, you have nothing more to give.

They may be convenient slaves, but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading the master and the abject dependent.

Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable – and life is more than a dream.

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.

Don’t ignore the five senses in search of a sixth.

So I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

The same ones you love will bring you pain.

One half of me is yours, the other half is yours, Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours, And so all yours.

You never understand anybody that loves you.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.

I’d rather be happy being myself than sad trying to please everyone else.