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

The best prophet of the future is the past.

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

Yes! ready money is Aladdin's lamp.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

All farewells should be sudden, when forever.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Sincerity may be humble but she cannot be servile.

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?

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

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

I live not in myself, but I becom Portion of that around me: and to me High mountains are a feelin, but the hum of human cities torture.

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.

I am... a mushroom; On whom the dew of heaven drops now and then.

Beauty, sweet love, is like the morning dew, Whose short refresh upon tender green, Cheers for a time, but till the sun doth show And straight is gone, as it had never been.

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

The dew of compassion is a tear.

Its liquor is like the sweetest dew from Heaven.

Delicious tears! The heart's own dew.

Nothing can beat the smell of dew and flowers and the odor that comes out of the earth when the sun goes down.

I think of art, at its most significant, as a DEW line, a Distant Early Warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.

Joy descends gently upon us like the evening dew, and does not patter down like a hailstorm.

The person who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb gray hairs.

Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.