“O marriage! marriage! what a curse is thine, Where hands alone consent and hearts abhor.”

The man with but one idea in his head is sure to exaggerate that to top-heaviness, and thus he loses his equilibrium.

First, then, a woman will, or won’t, – depend on’t; If she will do’t, she will; and there’s an end on’t. But, if she won’t, since safe and sound your trust is, Fear is affront: and jealousy injustice.

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.

A soldier plods and groans, sweats and toils, he growls and curses, and at the end he dies.

And then away for home! Away to the quickest and nearest train! Away from this cursed land, where the devil and his children stil walk with earthly feet!

Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.

I’m a father; I’m a friend. I think I’ve got the biggest heart in the world. A lot of times, that’s not a good thing. It’s a gift and a curse.

Children curse their parents for their wrinkled skin and hoarse voices. Those now old children also want to stop time, but at another time. They want to freeze their own children at the center of time.

It was the year you learned that shooting stars were either a blessing or a curse, depending on what you wanted to believe.

Beer is a gift from the goddesses, a soothing balm given our species to bring joy and comfort in compensation for the curse of self-awareness.

I tend to curse in French more often than I do in English.