From my experience, not one in twenty marries the first love; we build statues of snow and weep to see them melt.
I was not always a man of woe.
Thou and I are but the blind instruments of some irresistible fatality, that hurries us along, like goodly vessels driving before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish.
Oh, poverty parts good company.
Good even, good fair moon, good even to thee. I prithee, dear moon, now show to me the form and the features, the speech and degree, of the man that true lover of mine shall be.
For monarchs seldom sigh in vain.
Like the dew on the mountain, like the foam on the river, like the bubble on the fountain, thou art gone, and for ever!
Ambition is no cure for love!
We do that in our zeal our calmer moment would be afraid to answer.
Hard toil can roughen form and face, And want call quench the eye’s bright grace.
High minds, of native pride and force, Most deeply feel thy pangs, Remorse; Fear, for their scourge, means villains have, Thou art the torturer of the brave!
In love quarrels the party that loves the most is always most willing to acknowledge the greater fault.
Necessity – thou best of peacemakers, As well as surest prompter of invention.
Sordid selfishness doth contract and narrow our benevolence, and cause us, like serpents, to infold ourselves within ourselves, and to turn out our stings to the entire world besides.
Literature is a great staff, but a very sorry crutch.
A few drops sprinkled on the torch of love make the flame blaze the brighter.
Look not thou on beauty’s charming; Sit thou still when kings are arming; Taste not when the wine-cup glistens; Speak not when the people listens.
It is more difficult to look upon victory than upon battle.
Tears are the softening showers which cause the seed of heaven to spring up in the human heart.
He that would soothe sorrow must not argue on the vanity of the most deceitful hopes.