He kept at true good humor's mark The social flow of pleasure's tide: He never made a brow look dark, Nor caused a tear, but when he died..

I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away..

Clouds on clouds, in volumes driven, curtain round the vault of heaven..

... where the Greeks had modesty, we have cant; where they had poetry, we have cant; where they had patriotism, we have cant; where they had anything….

The juice of the grape is the liquid quintessence of concentrated sunbeams..

I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race..

I like the immaterial world. I like to live among thoughts and images of the past and the possible, and even of the impossible, now and then..

My quarrel with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes no quotations, is me judice, no book,—it is a playthi….

There are two reasons for drinking wine...when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it... prevention is bette….

In a bowl to sea went wise men three, On a brilliant night of June: They carried a net, and their hearts were set On fishing up the moon..

They have poisoned the Thames and killed the fish in the river. A little further development of the same wisdom and science will complete the poisoni….

Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond..

The mountain sheep are sweeter, But the valley sheep are fatter. We therefore deemed it meeter To carry off the latter..

The truth, I am convinced, is that there is no longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds, that moral, political, and physical scienc….

Man yields to death; and man's sublimest works Must yield at length to Time..

Time is lord of thee: Thy wealth, thy glory, and thy name are his..

Death comes to all. His cold and sapless hand Waves o'er the world, and beckons us away. Who shall resist the summons?.

The waste of plenty is the resource of scarcity..

My thoughts by night are often filled With visions false as fair: For in the past alone, I build My castles in the air..

A book that furnishes no quotations, is me judice, no book, — it is a plaything..

The critic does his utmost to blight genius in its infancy; that which rises in spite of him he will not see; and then he complains of the decline of….