“The power of example is so great as to take possession of the memory by a kind of violence, and produce effects almost without intervention of the will.”

“Jamais fille chaste n’a lu des romans, et j’ai mis à celui-ci un titre assez décidee pour qu’en l’ouvrant on sût à quoi s’en tenir. Celle qui, malgré ce titre, en osera lire une seule page est une fille perdue; mais qu’elle n’impute point sa perte à ce livre, le mal était fait d’avance. Puisqu’elle a commencé, qu’elle achève de lire: elle n’a plus rien à risquer.”

[Never has a chaste girl read novels, and I have given this one a title sufficiently decided that upon opening it one knows what to expect. The girl who, despite this title, dares to read a single page, is lost. But let her not impute her loss to this book. The evil was done in advance. Since she has begun to read, let her finish: she has nothing left to risk.]

“[The novel] The Way to Lose Him is very proper to debauch all young ladies who are still undebauched.”

“Novels ... are the powerful engines with which the seducer attacks the female heart; and, if we may judge by every day’s experience, his plots are seldom laid in vain.”

“[The novel is] a descriptive manual of speculative debauchery, with infallible rules for reducing it into practice.”

“Literature is a seducer; we had almost said a harlot.”

“Not tonight, dear. I’m reading Jane Austen.”