It is useless to tell one not to reason but to believe; you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep.

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

Sincerity may be humble but she cannot be servile.

Shelley is truth itself and honour itself notwithstanding his out-of-the-way notions about religion.

If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.

A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover but will sooner or later find a tyrant.

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.

Shakespeare’s name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down.

I am sure of nothing so little as my own intentions.

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.

Nothing can confound a wise man more than laughter from a dunce.

I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?

Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away; A single laugh demolished the right arm Of his country.

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

There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

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.

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

All farewells should be sudden, when forever.

I slept and dreamt that life was beauty; I woke and found that life was duty.

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; men love in haste but they detest at leisure.

It is useless to tell one not to reason but to believe; you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep.

The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat.

Self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens to stumble upon it.

Her great merit is finding out mine; there is nothing so amiable as discernment.

It is very iniquitous to make me pay my debts, you have no idea of the pain it gives one.

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.

Women hate everything which strips off the tinsel of sentiment, and they are right, or it would rob them of their weapons.

Wives in their husbands’ absences grow subtler, And daughters sometimes run off with the butler.

For what were all these country patriots born? To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn?

Yes! ready money is Aladdin’s lamp.

Romances I ne’er read like those I have seen.

The best prophet of the future is the past.

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?