Fate laughs at probabilities.
Art is the effort of man to express the ideas which nature suggests to him of a power above nature, whether that power be within the recesses of his own being, or in the Great First Cause of which nature, like himself, is but the effect.
There is nothing so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth.
Love like Death,, Levels all ranks, and lays the shepherd's crook Beside the scepter
Sharp is the kiss of the falcon's beak.
The public man needs but one patron, namely, the lucky moment.
Beside one deed of guilt, how blest is guiltless woe!
A prudent consideration for Number One.
Men never forgive those in whom there is nothing to pardon.
Love has no thought of self! Love buys not with the ruthless usurer's gold The loathsome prostitution of a hand Without a heart! Love sacrifices all things To bless the thing it loves!
Revenge is a common passion; it is the sin of the uninstructed. The savage deems it noble;but the religion of Christ, which is the sublime civilizer, emphatically condemns it. Why? Because religion ever seeks to ennoble man; and nothing so debases him as revenge.
Love is rarely a hypocrite; but hate--how detect and how guard against it! It lurks where you least expect it; it is created by causes that you can the least foresee; and civilization multiplies its varieties, whilst it favors its disguise.
The man who wants his wedding garments to suit him must allow plenty of time for the measure.
One of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth.
The circle of life is cut up into segments. All lines are equal if they are drawn from the centre and touch the circumference.
Beautiful eyes in the face of a handsome woman are like eloquence to speech.
Man only of all earthly creatures, asks, Can the dead die forever? - and the instinct that urges the question is God's answer to man, for no instinct is given in vain.
A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool.
Certain I am that every author who has written a book with earnest forethought and fondly cherished designs will bear testimony to the fact that much which he meant to convey has never been guessed at in any review of his work; and many a delicate beauty of thought, on which he principally valued himself, remains, like the statue of Isis, an image of truth from which no hand lifts the veil.
Our glories float between the earth and heaven Like clouds which seem pavilions of the sun, And are the playthings of the casual wind.
A good heart is better than all the heads in the world.
A pipe is the fountain of contemplation, the source of pleasure, the companion of the wise; and the man who smokes, thinks like a philosopher and acts like a Samaritan.
Life is short - while we speak it flies; enjoy, then, the present, and forget the future; such is the moral of ancient poetry, a graceful and a wise moral - indulged beneath a southern sky, and all deserving, the phrase applied to it - the philosophy of the garden.
In one of the Welsh counties is a small village called A-----. It is somewhat removed from the high road, and is, therefore, but little known to those luxurious amateurs of the picturesque, who view nature through the windows of a carriage and four.
A man's own conscience is his sole tribunal, and he should care no more for that phantom "opinion" than he should fear meeting a ghost if he crossed the churchyard at dark.
