“In England the only homage which they pay to Virtue – is hypocrisy.”

“If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad.”

“Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.”

“I have no consistency, except in politics; and that probably arises from my indifference to the subject altogether.”

“Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.”

“Man’s conscience is the oracle of God.”

“He who is only just is cruel. Who on earth could live were all judged justly?”

“Wine cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires the young, makes weariness forget his toil.”

“Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.”

“There’s naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion.”

“The best prophet of the future is the past.”

“They never fail who die in a great cause.”

“’Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it.”

“’Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it.”

“Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s verge.”

“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 heart will break, but broken live on.”

“Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure.”

“Who loves, raves.”

“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.”

“Absence – that common cure of love.”

“’Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark our coming, and look brighter when we come.”

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

“Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.” – Lord Byron

“What a strange thing man is; and what a stranger thing woman.”

“Friendship is Love without his wings!”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.

For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.

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 thousand years may scare form a state. An hour may lay it in ruins.

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

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

Let none think to fly the danger for soon or late love is his own avenger.

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

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

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

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

'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print. A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't.

In England the only homage which they pay to Virtue - is hypocrisy.

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.

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.

'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark our coming, and look brighter when we come.

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

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.