Great Throughts Treasury

"True happiness must arise from well-regulated affections, and an affection includes a duty."

"Virtue and pleasure are not, in fact, so nearly allied in this life as some eloquent writers have laboured to prove."

"A kind of mysterious instinct is supposed to reside in the soul, that instantaneously discerns truth, without the tedious labour of ratiocination. This instinct, for I know not what other name to give it, has been termed common sense, and more frequently, sensibility; and, by a kind of indefeasible right, it has been supposed, for rights of this kind are not easily proved, to reign paramount over the other faculties of the mind, and to be an authority from which there is no appeal."

"In what respect are we superior to brute creation, if intellect is not allowed to be the guide of passion? Brutes hope and fear, love and hate; but, without a capacity to improve, a power of turning these passions to good or evil, they neither acquire virtue nor wisdom. - Why? Because the Creator has not given them reason."

"The two sexes mutually corrupt and improve each other."

"Men and women must be educated, in a great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in. In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century. It may then be fairly inferred, that, till society be differently constituted, much cannot be expected from education."

"Society can only be happy and free in proportion as it is virtuous."

"Let women only acquire knowledge and humanity, and love will teach them modesty."

"Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye."

"Age demands respect; youth, love."

"Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil."

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

"In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century."

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

"Virtue can only flourish among equals. "

"Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness."

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

"It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust - ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out, which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream."

"The beginning is always today."