“I stood among them, but not of them; in a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts.”
“Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge.”
“So much alarmed that she is quite alarming, All Giggle, Blush, half Pertness, and half Pout.”
“Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, and yet a third of life is passed in sleep.”
“I am about to be married, and am of course in all the misery of a man in pursuit of happiness.”
“Though sages may pour out their wisdom's treasure, there is no sterner moralist than pleasure.”
“Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, streams like the thunderstorm against the wind.”
“All are inclined to believe what they covet, from a lottery-ticket up to a passport to Paradise.”
“Self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens to stumble upon it.”
“'Tis pleasure, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't.”
“I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.”
“A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover -- but will sooner or later find a tyrant.”
“It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time.”
“There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.”
“To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.”
“I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.”
“For in itself a thought, a slumbering thought, is capable of years, and curdles a long life into one hour.”
“If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.”
“It is useless to tell one not to reason but to believe --you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep.”
“Switzerland is a curst, selfish, swinish country of brutes, placed in the most romantic region of the world.”
“America is a model of force and freedom and moderation -- with all the coarseness and rudeness of its people.”
“The best way will be to avoid each other without appearing to do so -- or if we jostle, at any rate not to bite.”
“I am as comfortless as a pilgrim with peas in his shoes -- and as cold as Charity, Chastity or any other Virtue.”
“Our thoughts take the wildest flight: Even at the moment when they should arrange themselves in thoughtful order.”
“Posterity will never survey a nobler grave than this: here lie the bones of Castlereagh: stop, traveler, and piss.”
“I have imbibed such a love for money that I keep some sequins in a drawer to count, and cry over them once a week.”
“A mistress never is nor can be a friend. While you agree, you are lovers; and when it is over, anything but friends.”
“Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.”
“My attachment has neither the blindness of the beginning, nor the microscopic accuracy of the close of such liaisons.”
“Women hate everything which strips off the tinsel of sentiment, and they are right, or it would rob them of their weapons.”