"In a man's letters, you know, madam, his soul lies naked. His letters are only the mirror of his heart. Whatever passes within him is there shown undisguised in its natural progress; nothing is invent..."
- Michael Kelahan
"...you have not only a very large portion of my affection and esteem, but all that I am capable of feeling..."
"...your soul can never be long going to the fixed stars, where I intend to settle; or else you may find me in the milky way."
"Oh! my dearest love, why are our pleasures so short and so interrupted? How long is this to last?Know you, my best Mary, that I feel myself, in your absence, almost degraded to the level of the vulgar..."
"To sit down so often with nothing to say,-to say something so often, almost without consciousness of saying and without any remembrance or having said,-is a power of which I will not violate my modest..."
"...you influenced me, in a way in which no one else did."