“Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay.”

Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.

When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindu, his best friends hear no more of him.

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.

This lake exceeds anything I ever beheld in beauty.

Are we not formed, as notes of music are, For one another, though dissimilar?

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust.

Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart.

I love tranquil solitude.

Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle.

Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.

We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone.

Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance, and Change? To these All things are subject but eternal love.

I wish no living thing to suffer pain.

I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins, where black death Keeps record of the trophies won.

One should see the world, and see himself as a scale with an equal balance of good and evil. When he does one good deed the scale is tipped to the good – he and the world is saved. When he does one evil deed the scale is tipped to the bad – he and the world is destroyed.

The second class of evils comprises such evils as people cause to each other, when, e.g. , some of them use their strength against others. These evils are more numerous than those of the first kind. They likewise originate in ourselves, though the sufferer himself cannot avert them.

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.

Even the existence of this corporeal element, low as it in reality is, because it is the source of death and all evils, is likewise good for the permanence of the Universe and the continuation of the order of things, so that one thing departs and the other succeeds.

Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.

Every man should view himself as equally balanced: half good and half evil. Likewise, he should see the entire world as half good and half evil. With a single good deed he will tip the scales for himself, and for the entire world, to the side of good.

I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil.

The worse the evil, the readier must the Christian be to suffer it; he must let the evil person fall into Jesus’ hands.