It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a luster obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed...

Ready money is Aladdin’s lamp

Man’s love is of man’s life a part; it is a woman’s whole existence. In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.

Let us not unman each other; part at once; all farewells should be sudden, when forever

I have great hopes that we shall greatly appreciate each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.

I have found that a friend may profess, yet deceive.

With just enough of learning to misquote

Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes Sin’s a pleasure

For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave nothing that claims a tear.

My time has been passed viciously and agreeably; at thirty-one so few years, months, days, hours, or minutes remain that Carpe Diem ‘is not enough. I have been obliged to crop even the seconds-for who...

The memory of joy is no longer joy; the memory of pain is pain still.

I cannot describe to you the despairing sensation of trying to do something for a man who seems incapable or unwilling to do anything further for himself

Tis very puzzling on the brink Of what is called Eternity to stare, And know no more of what is here, than there

He counted them at break of day – / And when the sun set where were they?

His heart was one of those which most enamour us, / Wax to receive, and marble to retain.

What a strange thing is the propagation of life! A bubble of seed which may be spilt in a whore’s lap, or in the orgasm of a voluptuous dream, might (for aught we know) have...

I have always laid it down as a maxim –and found it justified by experience –that a man and a woman make far better friendships than can exist between two of the same sex –but...

Tis pity wine should be so deleterious, for tea and coffee leave us much more serious

Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift / My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift.

Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates — but pages might be filled up, as vainly as before, with the sad usage of all sorts of sages, who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore! The loftiest minds...

I’ve stood upon Achilles’ tomb, And heard Troy doubted: time will doubt of Rome

A better farmer ne’er brushed dew from lawn, / A worse king never left a realm undone!

There’s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away

What makes a regiment of soldiers a more noble object of view than the same mass of mob? Their arms, their dresses, their banners, and the art and artificial symmetry of their position and movements.

We have progressively improved into a less spiritual species of tenderness — but the seal is not yet fixed though the wax is preparing for the impression.

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, / And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; / And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, / When...

What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life’s page, And be alone on earth, as I am...

A lady of a `certain age’, which means / Certainly aged.

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

I have always believed that all things depended upon Fortune, and nothing upon ourselves.

As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for Nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other passions and resist or endure those of others.

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.

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

Ready money is Aladdin’s lamp.

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!