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

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.

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

Naming a transition team varies with the intentions of the candidate; some candidates have been careful to name a transition team as much as a year in advance.

I think we're entering a very dangerous time. The West has set itself up, decided it's in charge, not for good intentions, not for the benefit of mankind.

There are a lot of movies I'd like to throw away. That's not to say that I went in with that attitude. Any film I ever started, I went in with all the hope and best intentions in the world, but some films just don't work.

Our actions are the results of our intentions and our intelligence.

It's amazing how much you can learn if your intentions are truly earnest.

One lives with so many bad deeds on one's conscience and some good intentions in one's heart.

It strikes me there's a bunch of people in power who have really strong intentions of running the world and adjusting the world to exactly how they see it.

The most difficult thing is the organization of people and the expression of your intentions. It's very easy to have a picture in your head and to imagine that you've told everybody about what you need.

It is not enough to be well-intentioned; one must strive to put those intentions into action in a capable way. One must consider the effect his actions will have on others. Looked at like this, to persist in ignorance is itself dishonorable.

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.

But last year there were 540,000 people, roughly, detained coming across the border illegally. Forty-five thousand of them came from countries other than Mexico, demonstrating the fact that Mexico itself now is a pathway into the United States for people all around the world, and we don't know what their intentions are.

But I learned first-hand how the news media operates by watching how they interpreted, changed, and misrepresented my intentions.

A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant - rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance - but it is also a color, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself.

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.