I Despise The Pleasure Of Pleasing People

Nature Is Indeed A Specious Ward, Nay, There Is A Great Deal In It If It Is Properly Understood And Applied, But I Cannot Bear To Hear People Using It To Justify What Common Sense Must Disavow. Is Not Nature Modifed By Art In Many Things? Was It Not Designed To Be So? And Is It Not Happy For Human Society That It Is So? Would You Like To See Your Husband Let His Beard Grow, Until He Would Be Obliged To Put The End Of It In His Pocket, Because This Beard Is The Gift Of Nature?

[on Her Political Writings:] It Is, I Confess, Very Possible That These My Labours May Only Be Destined To Line Trunks, Or Preserve Roast Meat From Too Fierce A Fire; Yet In That Shape I Shall Be Useful To My Country.

The One Thing That Reconciles Me To The Fact Of Being A Woman Is The Reflection That It Delivers Me From The Necessity Of Being Married To One.

Whoever Will Cultivate Their Own Mind Will Find Full Employment. Every Virtue Does Not Only Require Great Care In The Planting, But As Much Daily Solicitude In Cherishing As Exotic Fruits And Flowers; The Vices And Passions (which I Am Afraid Are The Natural Product Of The Soil) Demand Perpetual Weeding. Add To This The Search After Knowledge. . . And The Longest Life Is Too Short.

I Am Afraid We Are Little Better Than Straws Upon The Water; We May Flatter Ourselves That We Swim, When The Current Carries Us Along.