“There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.”

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.

Tyranny is for the worst of treasons.

A timid mind is apt to mistake every scratch for a mortal wound.

Another day, another opportunity to prove everyone who doubts you wrong.

Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.

Pain was something we were expected to endure. But I doubt very much if you would be entirely happy today if a doctor threw a towel in your face and jumped on you with a knife.

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.

What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly.

God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.