Lord Byron

'Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it.

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.

In solitude where we are least alone.

The memory of joy is no longer joy, the memory of pain is pain still.

He who loves not his country can love nothing

Joy's recollection is no longer joy, while sorrow's memory is sorrow still.

But he with first a start and then a wink, Said 'There's another star gone out I think!'

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

He who surpasses or subdues mankind, must look down on the hate of those below.

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.

The power of Thought the magic of the Mind!

Of all the horrid hideous notes of woe, Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast, Is that portentous phrase 'I told you so'.

He makes a solitude and calls it - peace

Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes Sin's a pleasure

The night shows stars and women in a better light.

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

On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined.

There be none of Beauty's daughters, With a magic like thee.

Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life.

Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

I awoke one morning and found myself famous.

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.

Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company

America is a model of force and freedom and moderation - with all the coarseness and rudeness of its people.

She / Was married charming chaste and twenty-three.

All Heaven and Earth are still, though not in sleep, But breathless as we grow when feeling most.

Friendship is Love without his wings!

His heart was one of those which most enamour us / Wax to receive and marble to retain.

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.

Christians have burnt each other quite persuaded that all the Apostles would have done as they did

Oh nature's noblest gift my grey goose quill Slave of my thoughts obedient to my will Torn from the parent bird to form a pen That mighty instrument of little men

Sometimes we are less unhappy in being deceived by those we love than in being undeceived by them.

Talent may be in time forgiven but genius never

I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.

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

The tourture we desire is the greatest of all.

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

A tigress robb'd of young a lioness Or any interesting beast of prey Are similes at hand for the distress Of ladies who cannot have their own way

All human history attests, That happiness for man - the hungry sinner! Since Eve ate apples much depends on dinner.

What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page And be alone on earth as I am now

Oh! there is an organ playing in the street - a waltz too! I must leave off to listen.

If I don't write to empty my mind I go mad.

That household virtue most uncommon / Of constancy to a bad ugly woman.

The busy have no time for tears.

The isles of Greece the isles of Greece! / Where burning Sappho loved and sung / Where grew the arts of war and peace / Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung! / Eternal summer gilds them yet / But all except their sun is set.

Of its own beauty is the mind diseased / And fevers into false creation.

The 'good old times' - all times when old are good.

I am the very slave of circumstance / And impulse - borne away with every breath!

Years steal Fire from the mind as vigor from the limb, And Life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim

Man is born passionate of body but with an innate though secret tendency to the love of Good in his main-spring of Mind. But God help us all! It is at present a sad jar of atoms.

Fare thee well! and if for ever / Still for ever fare thee well.

Liberty - eternal spirit of the chainless mind

I, by no means, rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence - this may look like affectation, but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.

I see before me the Gladiator lie: / He leans upon his hand - his manly brow / Consents to death but conquers agony.

Passion is the element in which we live, without it we hardly vegetate.

Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate: / His keys were rusty and the lock was dull.

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.

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

A man must serve his time to every trade: Save Censure- Critics all are ready made

My native Land - Good Night!

War's a brain spattering windpipe splitting art.

The king-times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water and tears like mist, but the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it but I foresee it.

There is no traitor like him whose domestic treason plants the poniard within the breast that trusted to his truth.

He pattered with his keys at a great rate / And sweated through his apostolic skin: / Of course his perspiration was but ichor / Or some such other spiritual liquor.

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.

A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.

Roll on thou deep and dark blue Ocean - roll! / Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain, / Man marks the earth with ruin - his control / Stops with the shore.

I for one venerate a petticoat.

Sighing that Nature formed but one such man and broke the die.

Cool and quite English imperturbable.

Nothing so fretful so despicable as a Scribbler see what I am and what a parcel of Scoundrels I have brought about my ears and what language I have been obliged to treat them with to deal with them in their own way, / all this comes of Authorship.

Though sages may pour out their wisdom's treasure There is no sterner moralist than Pleasure

Life's enchanted cup sparkles near the brim.

Who tracks the steps of glory to the grave?

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

One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that they need no answer

War war is still the cry `War even to the knife!'

With pleasure drugged he almost longed for woe

All who joy would win - Must share it - happiness was born a twin

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.

There's naught no doubt so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion

When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy And the dimpling stream runs laughing by, When the air does laugh with our merry wit And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.

I like a woman to talk or I am left with the suspicion that she is thinking.

I thought it would appear / That there had been a lady in the case.

Maid of Athens ere we part / Give oh give me back my heart!

She for him had given / Her all on earth and more than all in heaven!

What an antithetical mind! -- tenderness roughness -- delicacy coarseness -- sentiment sensuality -- soaring and groveling dirt and deity -- all mixed up in that one compound of inspired clay!

There is in fact no law or government at all [in Italy], and it is wonderful how well things go on without them.

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

In short he was a perfect cavalier,  And to his very valet seemed a hero.

Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.

My great comfort is that the temporary celebrity I have wrung from the world has been in the very teeth of all opinions and prejudices. I have flattered no ruling powers, I have never concealed a single thought that tempted me.

Ready money is Aladdin's lamp

The castle crag of Drachenfels / Frowns o'er the wide and winding Rhine.

I live not in myself but I become / Portion of that around me, and to me / High mountains are a feeling but the hum / Of human cities torture.

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.

There is something to me very softening in the presence of a woman some strange influence even if one is not in love with them which I cannot at all account for having no very high opinion of the sex. But yet I always feel in better humor with myself and every thing else if there is a woman within ken.

It is a hard although a common case To find our children running restive- they In whom our brightest days we would retrace Our little selves reform'd in finer clay Just as old age is creeping on apace And clouds come o'er the sunset of our day Th

But here I say the Turks were much mistaken - Who hating hogs yet wished to save their bacon

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

All I saw farther in the last confusion, Was that King George slipped into heaven for one, And when the tumult dwindled to a calm, I left him practising the hundredth psalm.

When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation) sleep eating and swilling buttoning and unbuttoning - how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.

Yet, he was jealous though he did not show it, For jealousy dislikes the world to know it.

The arena swims around him - he is gone / Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

The way to be immortal (I mean not to die at all) is to have me for your heir. I recommend you to put me in your will and you will see that (as long as I live at least) you will never even catch cold.

The world is a bundle of hay / Mankind are the asses who pull, / Each tugs it a different way / And the greatest of all is John Bull.

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.

I do detest everything which is not perfectly mutual.

Why did she love him? Curious fool - be still - is human love the growth of human will?

A finished gentleman from top to toe.

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

Clime of the unforgotten brave! Whose land from plain to mountain-cave, Was Freedom's home or Glory's grave!

Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear

The very best of vineyards is the cellar

And wrinkles (the damned democrats) won't flatter

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.

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

As falls the dew on quenchless sands blood only serves to wash ambition's hands.

That all-softening overpowering knell / The tocsin of the soul - the dinner-bell.

Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine / And all save the spirit of man is divine.

'Tis pleasing to be school'd in a strange tongue by female lips and eyes - that is I mean, When both the teacher and the taught are young, As was the case at least where I have been, They smile so when one's right, and when one's wrong, They smile still more.

I stood / Among them but not of them, in a shroud / Of thoughts which were not their thoughts.

He left a Corsair's name to other times / Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.

A mind at peace with all below / A heart whose love is innocent!

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.

Even I / Regained my freedom with a sigh.

Still must I hear? - shall hoarse Fitzgerald bawl / His creaking couplets in a tavern hall / And I not sing?

The dew of compassion is a tear.

I am never long even in the society of her I love without yearning for the company of my lamp and my library

I have met with most poetry on trunks, so that I am pat to consider the trunk-maker as the sexton of authorship.

With just enough of learning to misquote

Dreading that climax of all human ills / The inflammation of his weekly bills.

I die - but first I have possessed / And come what may I have been blessed.

Nay more though all my rival rhymesters frown / I too can hunt a poetaster down.

Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy?

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole my entire my sincere motive in scribbling at all.

Nor be what man should ever be / The friend of Beauty in distress?

I know that two and two make four -- and should be glad to prove it too if I could -- though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure.

Where there is mystery it is generally suspected there must also be evil.

I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.

He said / Little but to the purpose.

Words are things and a small drop of ink falling like dew upon a thought produces that which makes thousands perhaps millions think

If this be true indeed / Some Christians have a comfortable creed.

She walks in beauty like the night, Of cloudless climes and starry skies, And all that's best of dark and bright, Meet in her aspect and her eyes.

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?

It is not one man nor a million but the spirit of liberty that must be preserved. The waves which dash upon the shore are one by one broken but the ocean conquers nevertheless. It overwhelms the Armada it wears out the rock. In like manner whatever the struggle of individuals the great cause will gather strength.

A light broke in upon my brain - / It was the carol of a bird, / It ceased and then it came again / The sweetest song ear ever heard.

I have found that a friend may profess yet deceive.

Well didst thou speak Athena's wisest son!/ All that we know is nothing can be known.

Who falls from all he knows of bliss Cares little into what abyss

Let these describe the indescribable.

With death doomed to grapple / Beneath this cold slab he / Who lied in the chapel / Now lies in the Abbey.

In her first passion a woman loves her lover in all the others all she loves is love

The land of self-interest groans from shore to shore / For fear that plenty should attain the poor.

'Tis pity wine should be so deleterious for, tea and coffee leave us much more serious

An old man / With an old soul and both extremely blind.

What makes a regiment of soldiers a more noble object of view than the same mass of mob? Their arms their dresses their banners and the art and artificial symmetry of their position and movements.

Not to admire is all the art I know.

But time strips our illusions of their hue And one by one in turn some grand mistake Casts off its bright skin yearly like the snake

Shakespeare's name you may depend on it stands absolutely too - high and will go down

Thy decay's still impregnate with divinity.

'Tis said that persons living on annuities are longer lived than others

It is by far the most elegant worship hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with incense pictures statues altars shrines relics and the real presence confession absolution -- there is something sensible to grasp at. Besides it leaves no possibility of doubt, for those who swallow their Deity really and truly in transubstantiation can hardly find any thing else otherwise than easy of digestion.

Adversity is the first path to truth.

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

Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead adorer of the ruin comforter and only healer when the heart hath bled... Time the avenger!

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.

If I don't write to empty my mind I go mad. As to that regular uninterrupted love of writing. I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture which I must get rid of but never as a pleasure. On the contrary I think composition a great pain.

The ''good old times'' -- all times when old are good.

'Tis sweet to hear the watch dogs' honest bark - Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home, 'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark - Our coming and look brighter when we come.

Men are the sport of circumstances when it seems circumstances are the sport of men.

So much alarmed that she is quite alarming All Giggle Blush half Pertness and half Pout.

But as to women who can penetrate the real sufferings of their she condition? Man's very sympathy with their estate has much of selfishness and more suspicion. Their love their virtue beauty education but form good housekeepers to breed a nation.

`Whom the gods love die young' was said of yore.

'Tis the perception of the beautiful, A fine extension of the faculties, Platonic universal wonderful, Drawn from the stars and filtered through the skies, Without which life would be extremely dull

All tragedies are finished by a death All comedies are ended by a marriage

Why don't they knead two virtuous souls for life / Into that moral centaur man and wife?

Why I came here I know not, where I shall go it is useless to inquire -- in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds stars systems infinity why should I be anxious about an atom?

O Fame! if I e'er took delight in thy praises, 'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases, Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover, The thought that I was not unworthy to love her.

When we two parted / In silence and tears / Half broken-hearted / To sever for years / Pale grew thy cheek and cold / Colder thy kiss,/ Truly that hour foretold / Sorrow to this.

I swims in the Tagus all across at once and I rides on an ass or a mule and swears Portuguese and have got a diarrhea and bites from the mosquitoes. But what of that? Comfort must not be expected by folks that go a pleasuring.

Like other parties of the kind it was first silent then talky then argumentative then disputatious then unintelligible then altogether then inarticulate and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder it was difficu

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart 'Tis woman's whole existence

Romances I never read like those I have seen.

All who would win joy must share it, happiness was born a twin.

I really cannot know whether I am or am not the Genius you are pleased to call me but I am very willing to put up with the mistake if it be one. It is a title dearly enough bought by most men to render it endurable even when not quite clearly made out which it never can be till the Posterity whose decisions are merely dreams to ourselves has sanctioned or denied it while it can touch us no further.

Oh! `darkly deeply beautifully blue' / As someone somewhere sings about the sky.

And hold up to the sun my little taper.

This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions.

For most men (till by losing rendered sager) Will back their own opinions by a wager

Friendship may and often does grow into love but love never subsides into friendship.

He had written much blank verse and blanker prose.

I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.

I've stood upon Achilles' tomb And heard Troy doubted: time will doubt of Rome

For Freedom's battle once begun / Bequeathed by bleeding Sire to Son / Though baffled oft is ever won.

Then farewell Horace, whom I hated so, Not for thy faults but mine.

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

This place is the Devil or at least his principal residence they call it the University but any other appellation would have suited it much better for study is the last pursuit of the society, the Master eats drinks and sleeps the Fellows drink dispute and pun the employments of the undergraduates you will probably conjecture without my description.

Such hath it been - shall be - beneath the sun the many still must labor for the one

Pythagoras Locke Socrates -- but pages might be filled up as vainly as before with the sad usage of all sorts of sages who in his life-time each was deemed a bore! The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.

The glory and the nothing of a name

Heart on her lips and soul within her eyes Soft as her clime and sunny as her skies

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

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

Dead scandals form good subjects for dissection

Switzerland is a curst selfish swinish country of brutes placed in the most romantic region of the world.

Dear Doctor I have read your play / Which is a good one in its way - / Purges the eyes and moves the bowels / And drenches handkerchiefs like towels.

The loudest wit I e'er was deafened with.

But who forgives the senior's ceaseless verse / Whose hairs grow hoary as his rhymes grow worse?

I tell thee be not rash, a golden bridge Is for a flying enemy.

A thousand years scarce serve to form a state, An hour may lay it in the dust

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

By headless Charles see heartless Henry lies.

Your letter of excuses has arrived. I receive the letter but do not admit the excuses except in courtesy as when a man treads on your toes and begs your pardon -- the pardon is granted but the joint aches especially if there is a corn upon it.

A little still she strove and much repented and whispering "I will ne'er consent" - consented

There is no sterner moralist than pleasure.

I have had and may have still a thousand friends as they are called in life who are like one's partners in the waltz of this world /not much remembered when the ball is over.

Think'st thou existence doth depend on time? It doth, but actions are our epochs

But Shakespeare also says 'tis very silly / `To gild refined gold or paint the lily'.

There is something Pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short I deny nothing but doubt everything.

I have seen a thousand graves opened and always perceived that whatever was gone the teeth and hair remained of those who had died with them. Is not this odd? They go the very first things in youth and yet last the longest in the dust.

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

And when we think we lead we are most led.

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

Good but rarely came from good advice

Hatred is the madness of the heart

And if I laugh at any mortal thing 'Tis that I may not weep

I have always believed that all things depended upon Fortune and nothing upon ourselves.

Of all the barbarous middle ages that which is most barbarous is the middle age of man! it is - I really scarce know what, but when we hover between fool and sage and don't know justly what we would be at - a period something like a printed page b

Smiles form the channels of a future tear.

All is to be feared where all is to be lost

There is a tide in the affairs of women Which taken at the flood leads God knows where

I think the worst woman that ever existed would have made a man of very passable reputation - they are all better than us and their faults such as they are must originate with ourselves.

Indigestion is - that inward fate which makes all Styx through one small liver flow

Society is smoothed to that excess that manners hardly differ more than dress

I do not believe in revealed religion - I will have nothing to do with your immortality, we are miserable enough in this life without speculating on another

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.

Romances paint at full length people's wooings but only give a bust of marriages: but no one cares for matrimonial cooings

Truth is a gem that is found at a great depth, whilst on the surface of this world all things are weighed by the false scale of custom

I like his holiness very much particularly since an order which I understand he has lately given that no more miracles shall be performed.

There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away

Now what I love in women is they won't or can't do otherwise than lie but do it so well the very truth seems falsehood to it

I have not loved the world nor the world me, / I have not flattered its rank breath nor bowed / To its idolatries a patient knee / Nor coined my cheek to smiles nor cried aloud / In worship of an echo.

This man is freed from servile bands Of hope to rise or fear to fall, Lord of himself though not of lands And leaving nothing yet hath all.

Sweet is revenge - especially to women.

The best way will be to avoid each other without appearing to do so -- or if we jostle at any rate not to bite.

Alas! The love of women! it is known to be a lovely and fearful thing!

A man must serve his time to every trade / Save censure - critics all are ready made. / Take hackneyed jokes from Miller got by rote / With just enough of learning to misquote.

But Life will suit Itself to Sorrow's most detested fruit Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's shore All ashes to the taste

There is no instinct like that of the heart.

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.

The Cincinnatus of the West, Whom envy dared not hate, Bequeathed the name of Washington, To make man blush there was but one!

Fame is the thirst of youth.

A bargain is in its very essence a hostile transaction. Do not all men try to abate the price of all they buy? I contend that a bargain, even between brethren, is a declaration of war.

The best of prophets of the future is the past

Alas! our young affections run to waste, Or water but the desert.

To fly from need not be to hate mankind.

I have always laid it down as a maxim /and found it justified by experience /that a man and a woman make far better friendships than can exist between two of the same sex /but then with the condition that they never have made or are to make love to each other.

The nursery still lisps out in all they utter -/ Besides they always smell of bread and butter.

I always looked to about thirty as the barrier of any real or fierce delight in the passions and determined to work them out in the younger ore and better veins of the mine /and I flatter myself (perhaps) that I have pretty well done so /and now the dross is coming.

It is true from early habit one must make love mechanically as one swims, I was once very fond of both but now as I never swim unless I tumble into the water I don't make love till almost obliged.

The negroes more philosophy displayed - / Used to it no doubt as eels are to be flayed.

I am as comfortless as a pilgrim with peas in his shoes -- and as cold as Charity Chastity or any other Virtue.

Physicians mend or end us Secundum artem, but although we sneer - In health - when ill we call them to attend us Without the least propensity to jeer

The Christian has greatly the advantage of the unbeliever having everything to gain and nothing to lose

Though they did not kiss, Yet still between his Darkness and his Brightness, There passed a mutual glance of great politeness.

Oh! snatched away in beauty's bloom / On thee shall press no ponderous tomb.

And having wisdom with each studious year in meditation dwelt with learning wrought and shaped his weapon with an edge severe sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer.

Dark-heaving - boundless endless and sublime / The image of eternity the throne / Of the Invisible.

Agree to a short armistice with truth.

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.

The fatal facility of the octosyllabic verse.

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 bit of a tussle before I let it get in again to that of any other.

The Cardinal is at his wit's end -- it is true that he had not far to go.

There is pleasure in the pathless woods

When Newton saw an apple fall he found In that slight startle from his contemplation - 'Tis said (for I'll not answer above ground For any sage's creed or calculation) - A mode of proving that the earth turned round In a most natural whirl called "G

Let simple Wordsworth chime his childish verse / And brother Coleridge lull the babe at nurse.

Alas! how deeply painful is all payment!

Yet Time who changes all had altered him in soul and aspect as in age: Years steal Fire from the mind as vigor from the limb, And Life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim

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.

Time the avenger! unto thee I lift / My hands and eyes and heart and crave of thee a gift.

Society is no one polished horde Formed of two mighty tribes the Bores and the Bored

It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs a luster obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment /but who can be sure that the Imagination is not the torch-bearer?

No ear can hear nor tongue can tell the tortures of the inward hell!

Ah surely nothing dies but something mourns.

Our thoughts take the wildest flight: Even at the moment when they should arrange themselves in thoughtful order.

Half dust half deity unfit alike to sink or soar

All farewells should be sudden when forever.

I love not man the less but Nature more.

Though I love my country I do not love my countrymen.

Adversity is the first path to truth, He who hath proved war storm or woman's rage Whether his winters be eighteen or eighty Has won the experience which is deemed so weighty

Poetry should only occupy the idle.

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

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.

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.

Constancy... that small change of love which people exact so rigidly receive in such counterfeit coin and repay in baser metal.

Troy owes to Homer what whist owes to Hoyle

He who ascends to mountain tops shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow, He who surpasses or subdues mankind Must look down on the hate of those below

I am always most religious upon a sunshiny day...

The sword outwears its sheath and the soul wears out the breast. And the heart must pause to breathe and love itself have rest.