But I hate things all fiction… there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric – and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.

So for a good old-gentlemanly vice, I think I must take up with avarice.

There is something to me very softening in the presence of a woman, some strange influence, even if one is not in love with them, which I cannot at all account for, having no very...

Who would be free themselves must strike the blow

Constancy… that small change of love, which people exact so rigidly, receive in such counterfeit coin, and repay in baser metal.

Here lies interred in the eternity of the past, from whence there is no resurrection for the days — whatever there may be for the dust — the thirty-third year of an ill-spent life, which,...

I awoke one morning and found myself famous.

Life’s enchanted cup sparkles near the brim.

Well didst thou speak, Athena’s wisest son!/ All that we know is, nothing can be known.

The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.

Sincerity may be humble, but she cannot be servile.

I am as comfortless as a pilgrim with peas in his shoes — and as cold as Charity, Chastity or any other Virtue.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean – roll! / Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain; / Man marks the earth with ruin – his control / Stops with the shore.

So much alarmed that she is quite alarming, All Giggle, Blush, half Pertness, and half Pout.

There’s naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion

For in itself a thought, a slumbering thought, is capable of years, and curdles a long life into one hour.

Society is now one polished horde, formed of two mighty tries, the Bores and Bored.

Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, / And fevers into false creation.

Ah, surely nothing dies but something mourns.

He scratched his ear, the infallible resource to which embarrassed people have recourse.

It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time.

Words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think

Man is born passionate of body, but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of Good in his main-spring of Mind. But God help us all! It is at present a sad jar...

I die, – but first I have possessed, / And come what may, I have been blessed.

With pleasure drugged, he almost longed for woe

Switzerland is a curst, selfish, swinish country of brutes, placed in the most romantic region of the world.

Nothing so difficult as a beginning In poesy, unless perhaps the end

I should like to know who has been carried off, except poor dear me — I have been more ravished myself than anybody since the Trojan war.

The night shows stars and women in a better light

The drying up a single tear has more of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.

He who ascends to mountain tops, shall find, The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow; He who surpasses or subdues mankind, Must look down on the hate of those below

The Cardinal is at his wit’s end — it is true that he had not far to go.

And, after all, what is a lie? ‘Tis but the truth in a masquerade

And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, / Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

I am about to be married, and am of course in all the misery of a man in pursuit of happiness.

Fare thee well! and if for ever, / Still for ever, fare thee well.

Smiles form the channels of a future tear.

One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if once mine gets out, I’ll have a...

I wish he would explain his explanation

Fame is the thirst of youth.

Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart, ‘Tis woman’s whole existence

Oh! snatched away in beauty’s bloom, / On thee shall press no ponderous tomb.

With death doomed to grapple, / Beneath this cold slab, he / Who lied in the chapel / Now lies in the Abbey.

Hatred is the madness of the heart.

Did ye not hear it? – No; ’twas but the wind, / Or the car rattling o’er the stony street;/ On with the dance! let joy be unconfined; / No sleep till morn, when Youth...

A light broke in upon my brain, – / It was the carol of a bird; / It ceased, and then it came again, / The sweetest song ear ever heard.

The mountains look on Marathon – / And Marathon looks on the sea; / And musing there an hour alone, / I dreamed that Greece might yet be free.

But here I say the Turks were much mistaken – Who, hating hogs, yet wished to save their bacon

A finished gentleman from top to toe.

A mistress never is nor can be a friend. While you agree, you are lovers; and when it is over, anything but friends.