Mary Collyer (née Mitchell) (c. 1716 – 1762) was an English translator and novelist.
The most savage and voracious animal never kills to increase his wealth, or open a way to grandeur. It slays to satisfy his hunger, or in a natural defense of his own life, or of those whom he is prompted by instinct to preserve.
I am to consider the many advantages arising from a frequent use of oaths, curses, and imprecations. In the first place, this genteel accomplishment is a wonderful help to discourse; as it supplies the want of good sense, learning, and eloquence. The illiterate and stupid, by the help of oaths, become orators; and he, whose wretched intellects would not permit him to utter a coherent sentence, by this easy practice, excites the laughter, and fixes the attention, of a brilliant and joyous circle.
Oaths and curses are a proof of a most heroic courage, at least in appearance, which answers the same end.
What the eye does not see, the heart does not rue
. . . those, who from an immoderate and false self-love, study to keep their humanity under, always take care, for their own sakes, to represent poverty to themselves, as something ridiculous, mean, and contemptible.
I am strangely addicted to the writing of long letters, which, I am afraid, tire you; and for the future, I believe, I must be less communicative, in order to be less troublesome.
Virtue is the music of the soul, the harmony of the passions.
Avarice, with all its black attendants, is confessedly a crime of old age, and seldom arrives at maturity till accompanied with gray hairs.
prayer must be, in its own nature, absurd and impertinent.
Virtue is the music of the soul, the harmony of the passions; it is the order, the symmetry, the interior beauty of the mind; the source of the truest pleasures, the fountain of the sublimest and most perfect happiness.
How tedious is time, when his wings are loaded with expectation!
swearing is, as I have said, learning to the ignorant, eloquence to the blockhead, vivacity to the stupid, and wit to the coxcomb.