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.

'Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it.

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

For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!

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

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.

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

It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time.

The beginning of atonement is the sense of its necessity.

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

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

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad.

Where there is mystery, it is generally suspected there must also be evil.

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

Truth is always strange, stranger than fiction.

The place is very well and quiet and the children only scream in a low voice.

Yes, love indeed is light from heaven; A spark of that immortal fire with angels shared, by Allah given to lift from earth our low desire.

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

For in itself a thought, a slumbering thought, is capable of years, and curdles a long life into one hour.

They never fail who die in a great cause.

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

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

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

Though sages may pour out their wisdom's treasure, there is no sterner moralist than pleasure.

The busy have no time for tears.

Society is now one polished horde, formed of two mighty tries, the Bores and Bored.

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

Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.

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

Absence - that common cure of love.

A woman should never be seen eating or drinking, unless it be lobster salad and Champagne, the only true feminine and becoming viands.

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.

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.

There is no instinct like that of the heart.

To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a twin.

Smiles form the channels of a future tear.

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

Who tracks the steps of glory to the grave?

For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave nothing that claims a tear.

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.

Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.

In solitude, where we are least alone.

Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire - in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?

Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.

Prolonged endurance tames the bold.

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

There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.

All who joy would win must share it. Happiness was born a Twin.