Men freely believe that which they wish to be the truth.

Lovers may be and indeed generally are enemies, but they never can be friends, because there must always be a spice of jealousy and a something of Self in all their speculations.

Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven; A spark of that immortal fire With angels shared, by Allah given To lift from earth our low desire.

It is very iniquitous to make me pay my debts, you have no idea of the pain it gives one.

Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away; A single laugh demolished the right arm Of his country.

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; men love in haste but they detest at leisure.

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

Romances I ne’er read like those I have seen.

The best prophet of the future is the past.

Shakespeare’s name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down.

This is the patent age of new inventions/ For killing bodies, and saving souls,/ All propagated with the best of intentions.

A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover but will sooner or later find a tyrant.

My great comfort is, that the temporary celebrity I have wrung from the world has been in the very teeth of all opinions and prejudices.

Opinions are made to be changed or how is truth to be got at?

Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogether, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious...

I really cannot know whether I am or am not the Genius you are pleased to call me, but I am very willing to put up with the mistake, if it be one.

Shelley is truth itself and honour itself notwithstanding his out-of-the-way notions about religion.

Wives in their husbands’ absences grow subtler, And daughters sometimes run off with the butler.

If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. . . I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must...

Sincerity may be humble but she cannot be servile.

There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less,...

I am so convinced of the advantages of looking at mankind instead of reading about them, . . . that I think there should be a law amongst us to set our young men abroad...

Yes! ready money is Aladdin’s lamp.

I slept and dreamt that life was beauty; I woke and found that life was duty.

For what were all these country patriots born? To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn?