The light of love, the purity of grace, The mind, the Music breathing from her face, The heart whose softness harmonised the whole – And, oh! that eye was in itself a Soul!
There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.
You gave me the key to your heart, my love, then why did you make me knock?
I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.
The thorns which I have reap’d are of the tree I planted; they have torn me, and I bleed. I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.
Tis strange,-but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction: if it could be told, How much would novels gain by the exchange! How differently the world would men behold!
Friendship is love without wings.
I love not man the less, but nature more.
They never fail who die in a great cause.
Letter writing is the only device combining solitude with good company.
I had a dream, which was not at all a dream.
What deep wounds ever closed without a scar?
Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire – in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?
I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.
But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.
Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the day after.
Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.
Are not the mountains, waves, and skies as much a part of me, as I of them?
In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.
There’s music in the sighing of a reed; There’s music in the gushing of a rill; There’s music in all things, if men had ears; The earth is but the music of the spheres.