I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning; I don’t think so much learning becomes a young woman: for instance, I would never let her meddle with Greek, or Hebrew, or algebra, or simony, or fluxions, or paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches of learning; nor will it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments; but… I would send her, at nine years old, to a boarding-school, in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice: then, sir, she would have a supercilious knowledge in accounts, and, as she grew up, I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries: this is what I would have a woman know; and I don’t think there is a superstitious article in it.
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- Madam, a circulating library in a town is as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge; it blossoms through the year. And depend on it that they who are so fond of handling the leaves, will long for the fruit at last.
- There is nothing on earth so easy as to forget, if a person chooses to set about it. I’m sure I have as much forgot your poor, dear uncle, as if he had never existed; and I thought it my duty to do so.
- I open with a clock striking, to beget an awful attention in the audience — it also marks the time, which is four o clock in the morning, and saves a description of the rising sun, and a great deal about gilding the eastern hemisphere.
- Take care; you know I am compliance itself, when I am not thwarted! No one more easily led, when I have my own way; but don’t put me in a frenzy.
- Modesty is a quality in a lover more praised by the women than liked.
- ‘Tis safest in matrimony to begin with a little aversion.