Sincerity may be humble but she cannot be servile.

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.

Nor should we exclude the possibility that Islamic terrorism may begin to make common cause with Western political extremists of the far Left and far Right.

In addressing a task, one almost always has several possible options, sometimes only a few, and they may all be practical and functional. But they lack the aesthetic aspect that raises it to architecture.

All enterprises that are entered into with indiscreet zeal may be pursued with great vigor at first, but are sure to collapse in the end.

Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it says is that a large sum of elements may have properties not found in a smaller sample of them.

Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.

This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.

It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups.

A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.

Lives of great men oft remind us as we o'er their pages turn, That we too may leave behind us - Letters that we ought to burn.

Yes, and I can sit down on a white piece of paper and work because I don't believe too much into inspiration, only I'm waiting for inspiration, work and then inspiration may come. It's a little too easy to say that.

When families observe a later, deeper stage of cult involvement they may find it necessary to consider the involvement of a professional such as myself in an intervention effort.