Sincerity may be humble but she cannot be servile.
— Lord Byron
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.
Romances I ne'er read like those I have seen.
It is very iniquitous to make me pay my debts, you have no idea of the pain it gives one.
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?
The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.
Though I love my country, I do not love my countrymen.
Smiles form the channels of a future tear.
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.
Nothing can confound a wise man more than laughter from a dunce.
For what were all these country patriots born? To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn?
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.
It is useless to tell one not to reason but to believe - you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep.
For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.
'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print. A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't.
Friendship is Love without his wings!
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.
I am sure of nothing so little as my own intentions.
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.
Shelley is truth itself and honour itself notwithstanding his out-of-the-way notions about religion.
All farewells should be sudden, when forever.
What a strange thing man is; and what a stranger thing woman.
The heart will break, but broken live on.
There are four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.
The best prophet of the future is the past.
If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom.
Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away; A single laugh demolished the right arm Of his country.
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.
He who surpasses or subdues mankind, must look down on the hate of those below.
Sometimes we are less unhappy in being deceived by those we love, than in being undeceived by them.
In England the only homage which they pay to Virtue - is hypocrisy.
The poor dog, in life the firmest friend. The first to welcome, foremost to defend.
Truth is always strange, stranger than fiction.
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.
Shakespeare's name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down.
A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover but will sooner or later find a tyrant.
Friendship may, and often does, grow into love, but love never subsides into friendship.
Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.
Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!
Wives in their husbands' absences grow subtler, And daughters sometimes run off with the butler.
Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; men love in haste but they detest at leisure.
I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?
But words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
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.
I am acquainted with no immaterial sensuality so delightful as good acting.
What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little.
Society is now one polished horde, formed of two mighty tries, the Bores and Bored.
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.
