Men, I think, have to be weighed, not counted.
Tranquillity! thou better name Than all the family of Fame.
Never can true courage dwell with them, Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look At their own vices.
A man’s desire is for the woman, but the woman’s desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.
Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.
How like herrings and onions our vices are in the morning after we have committed them.
Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.
A poet ought not to pick nature’s pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.
A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind.
All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.
If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand when he awake – Aye, what then?
There are errors which no wise man will treat with rudeness while there is a probability that they may be the refraction of some great truth still below the horizon.
A man’s as old as he’s feeling. A woman as old as she looks.
Swans sing before they die – ’twere no bad thing should certain persons die before they sing.
All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame All are but ministers of Love And feed His sacred flame.
And though thou notest from thy safe recess old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air love them for what they are; nor love them less, because to thee they are not what they were.
Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.
Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.
Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.
The genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely subtle, without being at all acute; hence there is so much humour and so little wit in their literature.