"There is always a 'but' in this imperfect world."

“If you loved as I do, she earnestly replied, you would not have so nearly lost me — these scruples of false delicacy and pride would never thus have troubled you — you would have seen that the greatest worldly distinctions and discrepancies of rank, birth, and fortune are as dust in the balance compared with the unity of accordant thoughts and feelings, and truly loving, sympathising hearts and souls.”

“I'd rather be like myself, bad as I am.”

“A girl's affections should never be won unsought.”

“How odd it is that we so often weep for each other’s distresses, when we shed not a tear for our own!”

“I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are, or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.”

“Intimate acquaintance must precede real friendship.”