“The drying up a single tear has more, of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.”

I am not now That which I have been.

I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable.

One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that they need no answer.

I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.

What’s drinking? A mere pause from thinking!

The leaves along the limpid streams of Eden? Is your course measur’d for ye? Or do ye Sweep on in your unbounded revelry Through an aerial universe of endless Expansion,–at which my soul aches to think,– Intoxicated with eternity.

All tragedies are finished by a death, All comedies are ended by a marriage.

Hearts will break – yet brokenly, live on.

Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire – in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?

Always laugh when you can; it is cheap medicine. Merriment is a philosophy not well understood. It is the sunny side of existence.

Till taught by pain, men know not water’s worth.

What an antithetical mind! – tenderness, roughness – delicacy, coarseness – sentiment, sensuality – soaring and groveling, dirt and deity – all mixed up in that one compound of inspired clay!

Self praise is no praise at all.

I live, but live to die: and, living, see nothing to make death hateful, save an innate clinging, a loathsome and yet all invincible instinct of life, which I abhor, as I despise myself, yet cannot overcome – and so I live. Would I had never lived!

You gave me the key to your heart, my love, then why did you make me knock?

I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.

Sooner or later. Late or early. Tears dry. Wounds heal.

When the heart is dry the eye is dry.

You don’t miss the water ‘til the well runs dry.

Drinking your milk and talking at the same time may result in your having to be patted on the back and dried for quite a long time afterwords.

Dried roses in the old novels make me believe in love stories.

When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.

Men are born soft and supple; dead they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry.

Maybe today I am a dry tree, I will fill up when it’s rain.