I should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law; and, even then, if I could have been certain to haunt...

I have seen a thousand graves opened, and always perceived that whatever was gone, the teeth and hair remained of those who had died with them. Is not this odd? They go the very first...

Christians have burnt each other, quite persuaded that all the Apostles would have done as they did

O Fame! if I e’er took delight in thy praises, ‘Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases, Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover The thought that I was...

When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), sleep, eating and swilling, buttoning and unbuttoning – how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.

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

Arm! Arm! it is – it is – the cannon’s opening roar!

War, war is still the cry, `War even to the knife!’

A `strange coincidence’, to use a phrase / By which such things are settled nowadays.

Dark-heaving – boundless, endless, and sublime, / The image of eternity, the throne / Of the Invisible.

It was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no longer a boy. From that moment I began to grow old in my own esteem –and in...

History is the devil’s scripture

Nothing so fretful, so despicable as a Scribbler, see what I am, and what a parcel of Scoundrels I have brought about my ears, and what language I have been obliged to treat them with...

I have a notion that gamblers are as happy as most people, being always excited; women, wine, fame, the table, even ambition, sate now and then, but every turn of the card and cast of...

What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.

That household virtue, most uncommon, / Of constancy to a bad, ugly woman.

Let these describe the indescribable.

Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead, adorer of the ruin, comforter and only healer when the heart hath bled… Time, the avenger!

I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in 20 minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it.

Good but rarely came from good advice

To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a twin.

`Whom the gods love die young’ was said of yore.

There is a tide in the affairs of women, Which, taken at the flood, leads God knows where

Critics are already made.

A thousand years may scare form a state. An hour may lay it in ruins.

Ready money is Aladdin’s lamp.

Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not / Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?

Nothing can confound a wise man more than laughter from a dunce.

It is by far the most elegant worship, hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with incense, pictures, statues, altars, shrines, relics, and the real presence, confession, absolution, — there is something sensible to grasp at....

The devil was the first democrat

A man must serve his time to every trade: Save Censure- Critics all are ready made

Thy decay’s still impregnate with divinity.

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?