“What concerns me now is that my life be a beautiful, powerful, in a word, a complete life of its kind.”

“Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved. As far as an amiable disposition and powers of entertainment make you so, it is a happiness; but if there is one grain of plausibility, it is poison.”

“Let every woman, who has once begun to think, examine herself”

“All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. I never see any of these things but I long to get away and lie under a green tree and let the wind blow on me. There is marvel and charm enough in that for me.”

“There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes.”

“Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow.”

“I now know all the people worth knowing in America and I find no intellect comparable to my own.”