America is a model of force and freedom and moderation – with all the coarseness and rudeness of its people.
It is odd but agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and sets me up for a time.
I cannot help thinking that the menace of Hell makes as many devils as the severe penal codes of inhuman humanity make villains.
What is fame? The advantage of being known by people of whom you yourself know nothing, and for whom you care as little.
I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.
Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away; A single laugh demolished the right arm Of his country.
Her great merit is finding out mine; there is nothing so amiable as discernment.
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.
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.
I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?
I would rather have a nod from an American, than a snuff- box from an emperor.
It is useless to tell one not to reason but to believe; you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep.
Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers.
As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for Nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other passions and resist or endure those of others.
Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.
I am about to be married, and am of course in all the misery of a man in pursuit of happiness.
For pleasures past I do not grieve, nor perils gathering near; My greatest grief is that I leave nothing that claims a tear.
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
I do detest everything which is not perfectly mutual.
Out of chaos God made a world, and out of high passions comes a people.