 Wives in their husbands' absences grow subtler, And daughters sometimes run off with the butler. |
| The reading or non-reading a book will never keep down a single petticoat. |
| For what were all these country patriots born? To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn? |
| 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. |
| Opinions are made to be changed or how is truth to be got at? |
| Shelley is truth itself and honour itself notwithstanding his out-of-the-way notions about religion. |
| What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence. |
| If I am fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom. |
| 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. |
| I am sure of nothing so little as my own intentions. |
| I slept and dreamt that life was beauty; I woke and found that life was duty. |
| 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. |
