The best prophet of the future is the past.
And hold up to the sun my little taper.
Brisk Confidence still best with woman copes: Pique her and soothe in turn-soon Passion crowns thy hopes.
I am no Platonist, I am nothing at all; but I would sooner be a Paulician, Manichean, Spinozist, Gentile, Pyrrhonian, Zoroastrian, than one of the seventy-two villainous sects who are tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and hatred of each other.
Nothing so difficult as a beginning In poesy, unless perhaps the end.
A legal broom’s a moral chimney-sweeper, And that’s the reason he himself’s so dirty.
Time strips our illusions of their hue, And one by one in turn, some grand mistake Casts off its bright skin yearly like the snake.
Tis said that persons living on annuities Are longer lived than others.
I learned to love despair.
All tragedies are finished by a death, All comedies are ended by a marriage.
Come what may, I have been blest.
I think the worst woman that ever existed would have made a man of very passable reputation – they are all better than us and their faults such as they are must originate with ourselves.
Thy decay’s still impregnate with divinity.
In general I do not draw well with literary men – not that I dislike them but I never know what to say to them after I have praised their last publication.
Poetry should only occupy the idle.
I speak not of men’s creeds – they rest between Man and his Maker.
Grief should be the instructor of the wise; Sorrow is Knowledge.
I have not loved the World, nor the World me; I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed To its idolatries a patient knee, Nor coined my cheek to smiles,-nor cried aloud In worship of an echo.
But every fool describes, in these bright days, His wondrous journey to some foreign court, And spawns his quarto, and demands your praise, – Death to his publisher, to him ’tis sport.
Ancient of days! august Athena! where, Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone – glimmering through the dream of things that were; First in the race that led to glory’s goal, They won, and pass’d away – Is this the whole?