Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

You can be pleased with nothing when you are not pleased with yourself.

The idle mind will sometimes fall into contemplations that serve for nothing but to ruin the health, destroy good humour, hasten old age and wrinkles, and bring on an habitual melancholy. 'Tis a maxim with me to be young as long as one can: there is nothing can pay one for that invaluable ignorance which is the companion of youth; those sanguine groundless hopes, and that lively vanity, which make all the happiness of life. To my extreme mortification I grow wiser every day...

I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise.

It has all been very interesting.

Civility costs nothing and buys everything.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.

I prefer liberty to chains of diamonds.

The fruit that can fall without shaking, indeed is too mellow for me.