I thought it would appear / That there had been a lady in the case.

Not to admire is all the art I know.

The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

The would-be wits and can’t-be gentlemen, I leave them to their daily “”tea is ready,”” Smug coterie and literary lady

O Gold! I still prefer thee unto paper, which makes bank credit like a bark of vapor.

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! / Where burning Sappho loved and sung, / Where grew the arts of war and peace, / Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung! / Eternal summer gilds...

The arena swims around him – he is gone,/ Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

The best way will be to avoid each other without appearing to do so — or if we jostle, at any rate not to bite.

Though women are angels, yet wedlock’s the devil

For Freedom’s battle once begun, / Bequeathed by bleeding Sire to Son, / Though baffled oft is ever won.

Joy’s recollection is no longer joy, while sorrow’s memory is sorrow still

Dear Doctor, I have read your play, / Which is a good one in its way, – / Purges the eyes and moves the bowels, / And drenches handkerchiefs like towels.

When we two parted / In silence and tears,/ Half broken-hearted / To sever for years, / Pale grew thy cheek and cold, / Colder thy kiss;/ Truly that hour foretold / Sorrow to this.

Sometimes we are less unhappy in being deceived by those we love, than in being undeceived by them.

All who joy would win – Must share it – happiness was born a twin

I like his holiness very much, particularly since an order, which I understand he has lately given, that no more miracles shall be performed.

I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?

It is useless to tell one not to reason but to believe /you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep.

The world is a bundle of hay, / Mankind are the asses who pull; / Each tugs it a different way, / And the greatest of all is John Bull.

Who loves, raves.

As falls the dew on quenchless sands, blood only serves to wash ambition’s hands.

Poetry should only occupy the idle.

Our thoughts take the wildest flight: Even at the moment when they should arrange themselves in thoughtful order.

The busy have no time for tears.

Alas! how deeply painful is all payment!

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt / In solitude, where we are least alone.

Society is smoothed to that excess, that manners hardly differ more than dress

Sublime tobacco! which from east to west Cheers the tar’s labor or the Turkman’s rest

I should be very willing to redress men wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, had not Cervantes, in that all too true tale of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail.

Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,/ With one fair Spirit for my minister, / That I might all forget the human race, / And, hating no one, love but only her!

Cool, and quite English, imperturbable.

All who joy would win must share it. Happiness was born a Twin.

It is very certain that the desire of life prolongs it.

Every day confirms my opinion on the superiority of a vicious life — and if Virtue is not its own reward I don’t know any other stipend annexed to it.

In England the only homage which they pay to Virtue – is hypocrisy.

He left a Corsair’s name to other times, / Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.

Dreading that climax of all human ills, / The inflammation of his weekly bills.

She / Was married, charming, chaste, and twenty-three.

Truth is always strange

But who forgives the senior’s ceaseless verse, / Whose hairs grow hoary as his rhymes grow worse?

Indigestion is – that inward fate which makes all Styx through one small liver flow

There is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?

An old man / With an old soul, and both extremely blind.

Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers.

A man must serve his time to every trade save censure — critics all are ready made.

Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear

Where’er we tread ’tis haunted, holy ground.

It is true from early habit, one must make love mechanically as one swims; I was once very fond of both, but now as I never swim unless I tumble into the water, I don’t...

But Tom’s no more – and so no more of Tom.

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.