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

The beginning is always today.

It is far better to be often deceived than never to trust; to be disappointed in love, than never to love.

If children are to be educated to understand the true principle of patriotism, their mother must be a patriot.

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.

Faith is like radar that sees through the fog — the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see.

The most hateful human misfortune is for a wise man to have no influence.

All the forces that are working in this body have been produced out of food; we see that every day.

The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.

Visualization is the human being’s vehicle to the future – good, bad, or indifferent. It’s strictly in our control.

The whole object of the Prophets and the Sages was to declare that a limit is set to human reason where it must halt.

Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.