Though I love my country, I do not love my countrymen.

Self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens to stumble upon it.

The way to be immortal (I mean not to die at all) is to have me for your heir. I recommend you to put me in your will and you will see that (as long...

Oh, nature’s noblest gift, my grey goose quill, Slave of my thoughts, obedient to my will, Torn from the parent bird to form a pen, That mighty instrument of little men

Sleep hath its own world, and a wide realm of wild reality. And dreams in their development have breath, and tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.

All farewells should be sudden, when forever.

Alas! our young affections run to waste, / Or water but the desert.

The dead have been awakened — shall I sleep? The world’s at war with tyrants — shall I crouch? the harvest’s ripe — and shall I pause to reap? I slumber not; the thorn is...

Oh! too convincing — dangerously dear — In woman’s eye the unanswerable tear!

Oh! `darkly, deeply, beautifully blue’, / As someone somewhere sings about the sky.

Your letter of excuses has arrived. I receive the letter but do not admit the excuses except in courtesy, as when a man treads on your toes and begs your pardon — the pardon is...

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.

O Man! Thou feeble tenant of an hour, Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power; Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust, Degraded mass of animated dust! Thy love is lust, thy friendship...

A man must serve his time to every trade / Save censure – critics all are ready made. / Take hackneyed jokes from Miller, got by rote,/ With just enough of learning to misquote.

Then farewell, Horace; whom I hated so, / Not for thy faults, but mine.

There is no traitor like him whose domestic treason plants the poniard within the breast that trusted to his truth

The tourture we desire is the greatest of all.

Why did she love him? Curious fool – be still – is human love the growth of human will?

But Life will suit Itself to Sorrow’s most detested fruit, Like to the apples on the Dead Sea’s shore, All ashes to the taste

It is a hard although a common case To find our children running restive- they In whom our brightest days we would retrace, Our little selves reform’d in finer clay, Just as old age is...

Her great merit is finding out mine – there is nothing so amiable as discernment.

The ”good old times” — all times when old are good.

I do detest everything which is not perfectly mutual.

I think the worst woman that ever existed would have made a man of very passable reputation – they are all better than us and their faults such as they are must originate with ourselves.

This man is freed from servile bands, Of hope to rise, or fear to fall; Lord of himself, though not of lands, And leaving nothing, yet hath all.

As soon / Seek roses in December – ice in June; / Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaff; / Believe a woman or an epitaph, / Or any other thing that’s false, before...

I do not believe in revealed religion – I will have nothing to do with your immortality; we are miserable enough in this life, without speculating on another

Romances I never read like those I have seen.

If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.

The sword outwears its sheath, and the soul wears out the breast. And the heart must pause to breathe, and love itself have rest.

All human history attests That happiness for man, – the hungry sinner! Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner

Science is but the exchange of ignorance for that which is another kind of ignorance.

I live not in myself, but I become / Portion of that around me; and to me / High mountains are a feeling, but the hum / Of human cities torture.

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.