Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.

Women of quality are so civil, you can hardly distinguish love from good breeding.

He’s a fool that marries, but he’s a greater that does not marry a fool; what is wit in a wife good for, but to make a man a cuckold?

Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.

It is easy enough to praise men for the courage of their convictions. I wish I could teach the sad young of this mealy generation the courage of their confusions.

Marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before.

Words may be false and full of art; Sighs are the natural language of the heart.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of...

Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be, yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.

No man is happy but by comparison.

My son – and what’s a song? A thing begot within a pair of minutes, thereabout, a lump bred up in darkness.

Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.

Ambition is a lust that is never quenched, but grows more inflamed and madder by enjoyment.

And wit’s the noblest frailty of the mind.

Wit is more necessary than beauty; and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it.

Poetry lies its way to the truth.

Clocks will go as they are set, but man, irregular man, is never constant, never certain.

Hope is a very thin diet.

Nothing goes further toward a man’s liberation than the act of surviving his need for character.

Next to the pleasure of finding a new mistress is that of being rid of an old one.

Written by a sponge dipped in warm milk and sprinkled with sugar.

No praying, it spoils business.

Every man loves what he is good at.

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.

Good fellowship and friendship are lasting, rational and manly pleasures.

A dollar saved is a quarter earned.

Honest men are the soft easy cushions on which knaves repose and fatten.

I am, out of the ladies’ company, like a fish out of the water.

A neighborhood is a residential area that is changing for the worse.

A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town, not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away.

The reader deserves an honest opinion. If he doesn’t deserve it, give it to him anyhow.

Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

What has any poet to trust more than the feel of the thing? Theory concerns him only until he picks up his pen, and it begins to concern him again as soon as he lays...

Mistresses are like books; if you pore upon them too much, they doze you and make you unfit for company; but if used discreetly, you are the fitter for conversation by em.

Women serve but to keep a man from better company.

Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.

Every game ever invented by mankind, is a way of making things hard for the fun of it!

I have heard people eat most heartily of another man’s meat, that is, what they do not pay for.

Come, for my part I will have only those glorious, manly pleasures of being very drunk, and very slovenly.

Exceeds man’s might: that dwells with the gods above.

The day will happen whether or not you get up.

Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.

Your women of honor, as you call em, are only chary of their reputations, not their persons; and ‘Tis scandal that they would avoid, not men.

Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.