“No- I cannot talk of books in a ballroom; my head is always full of something else.”

“One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.”

“but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.”

“I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.""Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”

“....how good Mrs. West could have written such books and collected so many hard works, with all her family cares, is still more a matter of astonishment! Composition seems to me impossible with a head full of joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb.”

“I cannot help thinking that it is more natural to have flowers grow out of the head than fruit.”

“[I]f a book is well written, I always find it too short.”