I do detest everything which is not perfectly mutual.

A mistress never is nor can be a friend. While you agree, you are lovers; and when it is over, anything but friends.

Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore.

Every day is a gift with a child, no matter what problems you have.

It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time.

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

And to say that society ought to be governed by the opinion of the wisest and best, though true, is useless. Whose opinion is to decide who are the wisest and best?

Edinburgh is my favourite city. We’ll be doing a lot of children’s theatre and galleries.

Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.

I cannot help thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains.

In England the only homage which they pay to Virtue – is hypocrisy.

The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity.

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

I write in that space between Ella’s childhood and mine. I know it all sounds a bit sinister.

There is no instinct like that of the heart.

Fame is the thirst of youth.

Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.

Poetry and prayer are very similar.

Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.

Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.

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.

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

The poor dog, in life the firmest friend. The first to welcome, foremost to defend.

I still read Donne, particularly his love poems.

I am about to be married, and am of course in all the misery of a man in pursuit of happiness.

A woman should never be seen eating or drinking, unless it be lobster salad and Champagne, the only true feminine and becoming viands.

None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser...

When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else’s. It’s like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn’t know was there, full of treasure and light.

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!

Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers.

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

One certainly has a soul; but how it came to allow itself to be enclosed in a body is more than I can imagine. I only know if once mine gets out, I’ll have a...

Who loves, raves.

I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.

Out of chaos God made a world, and out of high passions comes a people.

Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from birth as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and...

Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven; A spark of that immortal fire With angels shared, by Allah given To lift from earth our low desire.

The heart will break, but broken live on.

The place is very well and quiet and the children only scream in a low voice.

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.