Adversity is the first path to truth.

Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life.

‘Tis pleasant, sure, to see one’s name in print. A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in ‘t.

My prose is turgid, it just hasn’t got any energy.

Life’s enchanted cup sparkles near the brim.

I should be very willing to redress men wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, had not Cervantes, in that all too true tale of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail.

Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect; it made them a faction.

Lovers may be and indeed generally are enemies, but they never can be friends, because there must always be a spice of jealousy and a something of Self in all their speculations.

Smiles form the channels of a future tear.

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

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.

Sometimes we are less unhappy in being deceived by those we love, than in being undeceived by them.

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

Poets deal in writing about feelings and trying to find the language and images for intense feelings.

Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship.

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.

The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.

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

Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.

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

A realist, in Venice, would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him.

Friendship is Love without his wings!

I love not man the less, but Nature more.

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

Like the sand and the oyster, it’s a creative irritant. In each poem, I’m trying to reveal a truth, so it can’t have a fictional beginning.

The busy have no time for tears.

Who tracks the steps of glory to the grave?

The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the...

When your dreams tire, they go underground and out of kindness that’s where they stay.

In solitude, where we are least alone.

All who joy would win must share it. Happiness was born a Twin.

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.

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

Truth is always strange, stranger than fiction.

It’s always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal.

This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions.

Prolonged endurance tames the bold.

There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or...

Absence — that common cure of love.

What a strange thing man is; and what a stranger thing woman.

Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

It is well within the order of things that man should listen when his mate sings; but the true male never yet walked who liked to listen when his mate talked.

America is a model of force and freedom and moderation – with all the coarseness and rudeness of its people.

The dew of compassion is a tear.

It is very certain that the desire of life prolongs it.

I think the dangers are different now. Our abuse of the planet and our resources is an anxiety.

I would rather have a nod from an American, than a snuff-box from an emperor.

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.

To punish a man because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a...