“...you have not only a very large portion of my affection and esteem, but all that I am capable of feeling...”

“Oh! my dearest love, why are our pleasures so short and so interrupted? How long is this to last?Know you, my best Mary, that I feel myself, in your absence, almost degraded to the level of the vulgar and impure. I feel their vacant, stiff eyeballs fixed upon me, until I seem to have been infected with their loathsome meaning--to inhale a sickness that subdues me to languor. Oh! those redeeming eyes of Mary, that they might beam upon me before I sleep! Praise my forbearance--oh! beloved one--that I do not rashly fly to you, and at least secure a moment's bliss. Wherefore should I delay; do you not long to meet me? All that is exalted and buoyant in my nature urges me towards you, reproaches me with the cold delay, laughs at all fear and spurns to dream of prudence. Why am I not with you?”

“I like the word 'affection' because it signifies something habitual, and we are soon to meet to try whether we have mind enough to keep our hearts warm.”

“I had loved you all my life unaware, that is, the idea of you.”

“To sit down so often with nothing to say,-to say something so often, almost without consciousness of saying and without any remembrance or having said,-is a power of which I will not violate my modesty by boasting; but I do not believe everyone has it.”

“The more I examine my own mind, the more romantic I find myself.”

“whilst you love me, I cannot again fall into that miserable state which renders life a burden almost too heavy to be borne.”