One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that they need no answer.
The mind can make substance, and people planets of its own with beings brighter than have been, and give a breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
The reason that adulation is not displeasing is that, though untrue, it shows one to be of consequence enough, in one way or other, to induce people to lie.
Reason is so unreasonable, that few people can say they are in possession of it.
Alas! how deeply painful is all payment!
It is very iniquitous to make me pay my debts – you have no idea of the pain it gives one.
What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, is much more common where the climate’s sultry.
I have always laid it down as a maxim -and found it justified by experience -that a man and a woman make far better friendships than can exist between two of the same sex -but then with the condition that they never have made or are to make love to each other.
This sort of adoration of the real is but a heightening of the beau ideal.
A bargain is in its very essence a hostile transaction do not all men try to abate the price of all they buy? I contend that a bargain even between brethren is a declaration of war.
Self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens to stumble upon it.
But as to women, who can penetrate the real sufferings of their she condition? Man’s very sympathy with their estate has much of selfishness and more suspicion. Their love, their virtue, beauty, education, but form good housekeepers, to breed a nation.
It is true from early habit, one must make love mechanically as one swims; I was once very fond of both, but now as I never swim unless I tumble into the water, I don’t make love till almost obliged.
If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.
Curiosity kills itself; and love is only curiosity, as is proved by its end.
So for a good old-gentlemanly vice, I think I must take up with avarice.
Dreading that climax of all human ills the inflammation of his weekly bills.
It has been said that the immortality of the soul is a grand peut-tre -but still it is a grand one. Everybody clings to it -the stupidest, and dullest, and wickedest of human bipeds is still persuaded that he is immortal.
The fact is that my wife if she had common sense would have more power over me than any other whatsoever, for my heart always alights upon the nearest perch.
Jealousy dislikes the world to know it.
Our life is two fold Sleep hath its own world, A boundary between the things misnamed Death and existence Sleep hath its own world, And a wide realm of wild reality.