"Vile and ingrate! too late thou shalt repent The base Injustice thou hast done my Love: Yes, thou shalt know, spite of thy past Distress, And all those Ills which thou so long hast mourn'd; Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn'd."

"Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast, To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak. I've read, that things inanimate have mov'd, And, as with living Souls, have been inform'd, By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound. What then am I? Am I more senseless grown Than Trees, or Flint? O force of constant Woe! 'Tis not in Harmony to calm my Griefs. Anselmo sleeps, and is at Peace; last Night The silent Tomb receiv'd the good Old King; He and his Sorrows now are safely lodg'd Within its cold, but hospitable Bosom. Why am not I at Peace?"

"'Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman."

"Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing."

"Women are like tricks by sleight of hand, Which, to admire, we should not understand."

"I know that's a secret, for it's whispered every where."

"O fie, miss, you must not kiss and tell."

"I came up stairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar."

"Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude."

"I warrant you, if he danced till doomsday, he thought I was to pay the piper."

"Thou liar of the first magnitude."

"And the prettiest foot! Oh, if a man could but fasten his eyes to her feet, as they steal in and out, and play at bo-peep under her petticoats!"

"Now will I, in my old way, discover the whole and real truth of the matter to him, that he may not suspect one word on’t."

"Though marriage makes man and wife one flesh, it leaves 'em still two fools."

"Retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient custom."

"It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind."

"Thus grief still treads upon the heels of pleasure; Married in haste, we may repent at leisure."

"Men are apt to offend ('tis true) where they find most goodness to forgive."

"Eternity was in that moment."

"If this be not love, it is madness, and then it is pardonable."

"I find we are growing serious, and then we are in great danger of being dull."

"Hannibal was a very pretty fellow in those days."

"Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim."

"Then, what is Life?"

"... why God made irreconcilable Good and the means of good."

"... they who wore Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light, Signs of thought's empire over thought —their lore Taught them not this, to know themselves; their might Could not repress the mystery within."

"I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields; — Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. — You with the unpaid bill, Despair, — You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care, — I will pay you in the grave, — Death will listen to your stave."

"Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs — To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music lest it should not find An echo in another's mind."

"And like a prophetess of May Strewed flowers upon the barren way, Making the wintry world appear Like one on whom thou smilest, dear."

"Best and brightest, come away!"

"Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

"The life of Camillus, the death of Regulus; the expectation of the senators, in their godlike state, of the victorious Gauls; the refusal of the republic to make peace with Hannibal, after the battle of Cannae, were not the consequences of a refined calculation of the probable personal advantage to result from such a rhythm and order in the shows of life, to those who were at once the poets and the actors of these immortal dramas. The imagination beholding the beauty of this order, created it out of itself according to its own idea; the consequence was empire, and the reward everlasting fame. These things are not the less poetry, quia carent vate sacro [because they lack a sacred bard]. They are the episodes of that cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of men."

"A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. His auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician."

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

"Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain."

"Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar."

"Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age."

"Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted."

"The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself."

"Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things."

"I love Love — though he has wings, And like light can flee, But above all other things, Spirit, I love thee — Thou art love and life! Oh come, Make once more my heart thy home."

"I love tranquil solitude, And such society As is quiet, wise, and good; Between thee and me What difference? but thou dost possess The things I seek, not love them less."

"Let me set my mournful ditty To a merry measure; Thou wilt never come for pity, Thou wilt come for pleasure; Pity then will cut away Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay."

"Rarely, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight! Wherefore hast thou left me now Many a day and night? Many a weary night and day 'Tis since thou are fled away."