Dorothy Osborne

'[T]is a sad thing when all one's happiness is only that the world does not know you are miserable.

[A] real kindness is so far beyond all compliment, that it never appears more than when there is least of t'other mingled with it.

I am not apt to suspect without just cause, but in earnest if I once find anybody faulty towards me, they lose me for ever; I have forsworn being twice deceived by the same person.

I shall never be persuaded that marriage has a charm to raise love out of nothing, much less out of dislike.

All letters, methinks, should be as free and easy as one’s discourse, not studied as an oration, nor made up of hard words like a charm.

The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six or seven o’clock, I walk out into a common that lies hard by the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows and sit in the shade singing of ballads. [...] I …

[F]or me 'tis a better-natured and a less fault to believe too much than to distrust where there is no cause.