That low vice, curiosity!

And if I laugh at any mortal thing, ‘Tis that I may not weep

I am the very slave of circumstance / And impulse – borne away with every breath!

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!

Liberty – eternal spirit of the chainless mind

If I could always read, I should never feel the want of company.

There is no sterner moralist than pleasure.

The Christian has greatly the advantage of the unbeliever, having everything to gain and nothing to lose

He had written much blank verse, and blanker prose.

He pattered with his keys at a great rate, / And sweated through his apostolic skin: / Of course his perspiration was but ichor, / Or some such other spiritual liquor.

I stood among them, but not of them; in a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts.

One hates an author that’s all author

It is not for minds like ours to give or to receive flatter; yet the praises of sincerity have ever been permitted to the voice of friendship

In general I do not draw well with literary men / not that I dislike them but I never know what to say to them after I have praised their last publication.

While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; / When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; / And when Rome falls – the World.

My native Land – Good Night!

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.

Half dust, half deity, unfit alike to sink or soar

Truth is a gem that is found at a great depth; whilst on the surface of this world, all things are weighed by the false scale of custom

Maid of Athens, ere we part, / Give, oh give me back my heart!

I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence -this may look like affectation but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.

The best of prophets of the future is the past

If we must have a tyrant, let him at least be a gentleman who has been bred to the business, and let us fall by the axe and not by the butcher’s cleaver.

Tis the perception of the beautiful, A fine extension of the faculties, Platonic, universal, wonderful, Drawn from the stars, and filtered through the skies, Without which life would be extremely dull

I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.

As to ”Don Juan,” confess that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing; it may be bawdy, but is it not good English? It may be profligate, but is it not life,...

Tempted fate will leave the loftiest star.

I know that two and two make four — and should be glad to prove it too if I could — though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2...

There be none of Beauty’s daughters / With a magic like thee.

Nay more, though all my rival rhymesters frown, / I too can hunt a poetaster down.

I swims in the Tagus all across at once, and I rides on an ass or a mule, and swears Portuguese, and have got a diarrhea and bites from the mosquitoes. But what of that?...

And hold up to the sun my little taper.

But time strips our illusions of their hue, And one by one in turn, some grand mistake Casts off its bright skin yearly like the snake

In truth, he was a noble steed.

The drying up a single tear has more – Of honest fame than shedding seas of gore

My turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and then.

Tis sweet to hear the watch dogs’ honest bark – Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home; ‘Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark – Our coming and look brighter when...

Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate: / His keys were rusty, and the lock was dull.

The lapse of ages changes all things — time, language, the earth, the bounds of the sea, the stars of the sky, and every thing ”about, around, and underneath” man, except man himself.

The very best of vineyards is the cellar

The king-times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I foresee it.

I for one venerate a petticoat.

With just enough of learning to misquote.

Absence – that common cure of love.

I always looked to about thirty as the barrier of any real or fierce delight in the passions, and determined to work them out in the younger ore and better veins of the mine /and...

The heart will break, but broken live on.

Now what I love in women is, they won’t or can’t do otherwise than lie, but do it so well, the very truth seems falsehood to it

Though they did not kiss, / Yet still between his Darkness and his Brightness / There passed a mutual glance of great politeness.

This place is the Devil, or at least his principal residence, they call it the University, but any other appellation would have suited it much better, for study is the last pursuit of the society;...

Opinions are made to be changed -or how is truth to be got at?