"Humour is the mistress of tears; she knows the way to the fons lachrymarum, strikes in dry and rugged places with her enchanting wand, and bids the fountain gush and sparkle. She has refreshed myriads more from her natural springs, than ever tragedy has watered from her pompous old urn."

"Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little"

"It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can't: and are proud of our impotence, too."

"Yes, I am a fatal man, Madame Fribsbi. To inspire hopeless passion is my destiny."

"Remember, it's as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman."

"Of the Corporation of the Goosequill — of the Press, my boy, … of the fourth estate … There she is — the great engine — she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quarter of the world — her couriers upon every road. Her officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's cabinets. They are ubiquitous."

"Although I enter not, Yet round about the spot Ofttimes I hover, And near the sacred gate, With longing eyes I wait, Expectant of her."

"As the gambler said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love and lose is the next best."

"If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!"

"How hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy!"

"We see flowers of good blooming in foul places."

"'Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard, Master Harry — every man of every nation has done that — 'tis the living up to it that is difficult, as I know to my cost."

"'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel."

"There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write."

"If there is a verity in wine, according to the old adage, what an amiable-natured character Dick's must have been! In proportion as he took in wine he overflowed with kindness."

"I think Steele shone rather than sparkled."

"Dick never thought that his bottle companion was a butt to aim at—only a friend to shake by the hand."

"We love being in love, that's the truth on't."

"What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables."

"The true pleasure of life is to live with your inferiors."

"What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy's tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes."

"The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts: but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?"

"To be beautiful is enough. If a woman can do that well, who shall demand more from her? You don't want a rose to sing."

"Young ladies may have been crossed in love, and have had their sufferings, their frantic moments of grief and tears, their wakeful nights, and so forth; but it is only in very sentimental novels that people occupy themselves perpetually with that passion; and, I believe, what are called broken hearts are very rare articles indeed."

"If love lives through all life; and survives through all sorrow; and remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all darkness of spirit burns brightly; and if we die deplores us forever and loves still equally; and exists with the very last gasp and throb of the faithful bosom—whence it passes with the pure soul beyond death; surely it shall be immortal!"

"Bad husbands will make bad wives."

"People hate, as they love, unreasonably."

"This a noble dish is— A sort of soup or broth, or brew, Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, That Greenwich never could outdo."

"Christmas is here: Winds whistle shrill, Icy and chill, Little care we: Little we fear Weather without, Sheltered about The Mahogany Tree."

"Ho, pretty page, with the dimpled chin, That never has known the barber’s shear, All your wish is woman to win, This is the way that boys begin,— Wait till you come to Forty Year."

"Werther had a love for Charlotte Such as words could never utter; Would you know how first he met her? She was cutting bread and butter."

"Charlotte, having seen his body Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person, Went on cutting bread and butter."

"Then sing as Martin Luther sang, As Doctor Martin Luther sang: “Who loves not wine, woman and song, He is a fool his whole life long!”"

"The play is done; the curtain drops, Slow falling to the prompter’s bell: A moment yet the actor stops, And looks around, to say farewell. It is an irksome word and task; And, when he’s laughed and said his say, He shows, as he removes the mask, A face that’s anything but gay."

"The book of female logic is blotted all over with tears, and Justice in their courts is for ever in a passion."

"Women like not only to conquer, but to be conquered."

"Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so?"

"When a man is in love with one woman in a family, it is astonishing how fond he becomes of every person connected with it."

"Love seems to survive life, and to reach beyond it. I think we take it with us past the grave. Do we not still give it to those who have left us? May we not hope that they feel it for us, and that we shall leave it here in one or two fond bosoms, when we also are gone?"

"I would rather make my name than inherit it."

"He that has ears to hear, let him stuff them with cotton."

"I never know whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his senses."

"Who does not believe his first passion eternal?"

"Next to the very young, I suppose the very old are the most selfish."

"If there is no love more in yonder heart, it is but a corpse unburied."

"'Tis hard with respect to Beauty, that its possessor should not have even a life-enjoyment of it, but be compelled to resign it after, at the most, some forty years' lease."

"To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it; to go through intrigue spotless; and to forgo even ambition when the end is gained — who can say this is not greatness?"

"Kindnesses are easily forgotten; but injuries!—what worthy man does not keep those in mind?"

"Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you."

"We are most of us very lonely in the world. You who have any who love you, cling to them, and thank God."