“This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions.”
“For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave nothing that claims a tear.”
“I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?”
“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.”
“I cannot help thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains.”
“Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead, adorer of the ruin, comforter and only healer when the heart hath bled... Time, the avenger!”
“Constancy... that small change of love, which people exact so rigidly, receive in such counterfeit coin, and repay in baser metal.”
“For the sword outwears its sheath, and the soul wears out the breast. And the heart must pause to breathe, and love itself have rest.”
“A woman should never be seen eating or drinking, unless it be lobster salad and Champagne, the only true feminine and becoming viands.”
“No more we meet in yonder bowers Absence has made me prone to roving; But older, firmer hearts than ours, Have found monotony in loving.”
“I should like to know who has been carried off, except poor dear me -- I have been more ravished myself than anybody since the Trojan war.”
“I like his holiness very much, particularly since an order, which I understand he has lately given, that no more miracles shall be performed.”
“But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew, upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.”
“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.”
“The mind can make substance, and people planets of its own with beings brighter than have been, and give a breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.”
“Sleep hath its own world, and a wide realm of wild reality. And dreams in their development have breath, and tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.”
“Every day confirms my opinion on the superiority of a vicious life -- and if Virtue is not its own reward I don't know any other stipend annexed to it.”
“And yet a little tumult, now and then, is an agreeable quickener of sensation; such as a revolution, a battle, or an adventure of any lively description.”
“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.”
“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.”
“But I hate things all fiction... there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric -- and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.”
“We have progressively improved into a less spiritual species of tenderness -- but the seal is not yet fixed though the wax is preparing for the impression.”
“The reason that adulation is not displeasing is that, though untrue, it shows one to be of consequence enough, in one way or other, to induce people to lie.”
“Man's love is of man's life a part; it is a woman's whole existence. In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.”
“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.”
“The Angels were all singing out of tune, and hoarse with having little else to do, excepting to wind up the sun and moon or curb a runaway young star or two.”
“The fact is that my wife if she had common sense would have more power over me than any other whatsoever, for my heart always alights upon the nearest perch.”
“What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence.”
“There is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?”
“But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.”