Marriage is the highest state of friendship. If happy, it lessens our cares by dividing them, at the same time that it doubles our pleasures by mutua… - Samuel Richardson

That she thought me the prettiest creature she ever beheld. — Creature was her word — We are all creatures, ’tis true: But I think I never was more displeased with the sound of the word Creature, than I was from Lady Anne.

What poor wretches are we, Harriet, men as well as women! We pray for long life; and what is the issue of our prayers, but leave to outlive our teeth and our friends, to stand in the way of our elbowing relations, and to change our swan-skins for skins of buff; which nevertheless will keep out neither cold nor infirmity?

Only, my dear Love, my Harriet, the support of my life, and comfort of my evil days, endeavour, for my sake, and for the sake of us all, to restrain so far your laudable inclination, as that, if it be not your happy lot to give us, as well as yourself, so desirable a blessing, you may not suffer in your health (an health so precious to me) and put yourself on a soot with vulgar girls run away with by their headstrong passions. The more desirable the object, the nobler the conquest of your passion, if it is to be overcome.