“Moral maxims are surprisingly useful on occasions when we can invent little else to justify our actions.”

Better the illusions that exalt us than ten thousand truths.

Try to be forgotten. Go live in the country. Stay in mourning for two years, then remarry, but choose somebody decent.

If you but knew the flames that burn in me which I attempt to beat down with my reason.

Then came a moment of renaissance, I looked up – you again are there, A fleeting vision, the quintessence Of all that`s beautiful and rare.

Unrequited love is not an affront to man but raises him.

It is better to have dreamed a thousand dreams that never were than never to have dreamed at all.

Fearing no insult, asking for no crown, receive with indifference both flattery and slander, and do not argue with a fool.

Somewhere between obsession and compulsion is impulse.

Love passed, the Muse appeared, the weather of mind got clarity new-found; now free, I once more weave together emotion, thought, and magic sound.

I am married and happy. My only wish is that nothing will change.

Two fixed ideas can no more exist together in the moral world than two bodies can occupy one and the same place in the physical world.

A man who’s active and incisive can yet keep nail-care much in mind: why fight what’s known to be decisive? Custom is despot of mankind.

To love all ages yield surrender; But to the young it’s raptures bring A blessing bountiful and tender- As storms refresh the fields of spring.

A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.

Tis time, my friend, ’tis time! For rest the heart is aching; Days follow days in flight, and every day is taking, Fragments of being, while together you and I, Make plans to live. Look, all is dust, and we shall die.

The less we show our love to a woman, Or please her less, and neglect our duty, The more we trap and ruin her surely, In the flattering toils of philandery.