“Art, however innocent, looks like deceiving.”

Joys, which we do not know, we do not wish.

Shame on those breasts of stone that cannot melt in soft adoption of another’s sorrow.

Law that shocks equity is reason’s murderer.

Order, thou eye of action.

Birth is a shadow. Courage, self-sustained, outlords succession’s phlegm, and needs no ancestors.

Servile doubt argues an impotence of mind, that says we fear because we dare not meet misfortunes.

There is no merit where there is no trial; and till experience stamps the mark of strength, cowards may pass for heroes, and faith for falsehood.

She who means no mischief does it all.

Youth is ever apt to judge in haste, and lose the medium in the wild extreme.

When Christ at Cana’s feast by pow’r divine, Inspir’d cold water, with the warmth of wine, See! cry’d they while, in red’ning tide, it gush’d, The bashful stream hath seen its God and blush’d.

Deceit is the false road to happiness; and all the joys we travel through to vice, like fairy banquets, vanish when we touch them.

Trust me–with women worth the being won, The softest lover ever best succeeds.

Oh, treacherous night thou lendest thy ready veil to every treason, and teeming mischief’s beneath thy shade.

Mischief and malice grow on the same branch of the tree of evil.

Man is the circled oak; woman the ivy.

The man who pauses on the paths of treason, Halts on a quicksand, the first step engulfs him.

The serious revolutionary, like the serious artist, can’t afford to lead a sentimental or self-deceiving life.