Welcome to the web’s most comprehensive site of quotations by women. 43,939 quotations are searchable by topic, by author's name, or by keyword. Many of them appear in no other collection. And new ones are added continually.

See All TOPICS Available:
See All AUTHORS Available:

Search by Topic:

  • topic cats
  • topic books
  • topic moon

Find quotations by TOPIC (coffee, love, dogs)
or search alphabetically below.

Search by Last Name:

  • Quotes by Zora Neale Hurston
  • Quotes by Louisa May Alcott
  • Quotes by Chingling Soong

Find quotations by the AUTHOR´S LAST NAME
or alphabetically below.

Search by Keyword:

  • keyword fishing
  • keyword twilight
  • keyword Australie

Hester Lynch Piozzi

  • [Samuel] Johnson's conversation was by much too strong for a person accustomed to obsequiousness and flattery; it was mustard in a young child's mouth!

    • Hester Lynch Piozzi,
    • 1781, in James Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. ()
  • Nothing is so fatiguing as the life of a wit ...

    • Hester Lynch Piozzi,
    • 1778, in Fanny Burney, Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay, vol. 1 ()
  • ... 'tis never for their wisdom that one loves the wisest, or for their wit that one loves the wittiest; 'tis for benevolence, and virtue, and honest fondness, one loves people; the other qualities make one proud of loving them too.

    • Hester Lynch Piozzi,
    • 1779, in Fanny Burney, Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay, vol. 1 ()
  • The pleasures of intimacy in friendship depend far more on external circumstances than people of a sentimental turn of mind are willing to concede; and when constant companionship ceases to suit the convenience of both parties, the chances are that it will be dropped on the first favourable opportunity.

    • Hester Lynch Piozzi,
    • 1783, in A. Hayward, ed., Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale), vol. 1 ()
  • ... let dullness have its due: and remember that if life and conversation are happily compared to a bowl of punch, there must be more water in it than spirit, acid, or sugar.

    • Hester Lynch Piozzi,
    • 1817, in A. Hayward, ed., Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale), vol. 2 ()
  • We look on those approaching the banks of a river all must cross, with ten times the interest they excited when dancing in the meadow.

    • Hester Lynch Piozzi,
    • 1817, in A. Hayward, ed., Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale), vol. 2 ()
  • Friendship is far more delicate than love. Quarrels and fretful complaints are attractive in the last, offensive in the first. And the very things which heap fewel on the fire of ardent passion, choke and extinguish sober and true regard. On the other hand, time, which is sure to destroy that love of which half certainly depends on desire, is as sure to increase a friendship founded on talents, warm with esteem, and ambitious of success for the object of it.

    • Hester Lynch Piozzi,
    • 1820, in Oswald G. Knapp, ed., The Intimate Letters of Hester Piozzi and Penelope Pennington 1788-1821 ()
  • I think character never changes; the Acorn becomes an Oak, which is very little like an Acorn to be sure, but it never becomes an Ash ...

    • Hester Lynch Piozzi,
    • 1797, in Oswald G. Knapp, ed., The Intimate Letters of Hester Piozzi and Penelope Pennington 1788-1821 ()
  • ... one should know the value of Life better than to pout any part of it away.

    • Hester Lynch Piozzi,
    • 1789, in Oswald G. Knapp, ed., The Intimate Letters of Hester Piozzi and Penelope Pennington 1788-1821 ()
  • No companion however wise, no friend however useful, can be to me what my mother has been: her image will long pursue my fancy; her voice for ever hang in my ears: may her precepts but sink into my heart!

    • Hester Lynch Piozzi,
    • letter to Dr. Johnson (1773), in R. Brimley Johnson, ed., The Letters of Mrs. Thrale ()
  • ... I am perpetually bringing or losing babies, both very dreadful operations to me, and which tear mind and body both in pieces very cruelly.

    • Hester Lynch Piozzi,
    • letter to Dr. Johnson (1775), in R. Brimley Johnson, ed., The Letters of Mrs. Thrale ()
  • A physician can sometimes parry the scythe of death, but has no power over the sand in the hour-glass.

    • Hester Lynch Piozzi,
    • letter to Fanny Burney (1781), in R. Brimley Johnson, ed., The Letters of Mrs. Thrale ()
  • If truth can be found in any sublunary science, numbers will produce it, for to that at last almost all other sciences refer for confirmation.

    • Hester Lynch Piozzi,
    • letter to Dr. Johnson (1783), in R. Brimley Johnson, ed., The Letters of Mrs. Thrale ()
  • ... he loved to talk better than to hear, and to dispute better than to please ... people generally left the room with a high opinion of that gentleman's parts and a confirmed resolution to avoid his society.

    • Hester Lynch Piozzi,
    • 1776, Thraliana ()
  • Miss Owen and Miss Burney asked me if I had never been in love; 'with myself,' said I, 'and most passionately.' When any man likes me I never am surprised, for I think how should he help it? When any man does not like me, I think him a blockhead, and there's an end of the matter.

    • Hester Lynch Piozzi,
    • 1781, Thraliana ()

Hester Lynch Piozzi, English memoirist

(1741 - 1821)

Full name: Hester Lynch Salusbury Thrale Piozzi.