We are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves – such a friend ought to be – do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures.
You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend.
With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries.
What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?
Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin.
The companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.
No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.
Liberty, however, had been a useless gift to me, had I not, as I awakened to reason, at the same time awakened to revenge.
I am alone, and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me.
When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?
What may not be expected in a country of eternal light?
To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death.
