"One of his sentences, written two months after his last interview with Mrs. Sinico, read: Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse."

"But there was no harshness in the eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in others but often disappointed. He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense."

"Everything in Paris is gay"

"He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was a melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen."

"He was not sure what idea he wished to express but the thought that a poetic moment had touched upon him took life within him like an infant hope. He stepped onward bravely."

"She dealt with moral problems the way a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had made up her mind."

"Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger."

"The hero [of a narrative] must be male, regardless of the gender of the text-image, because the obstacle, whatever its personification, is morphologically female....The hero, the mythical subject, is constructed as human being and as male; he is the active principle of culture, the establisher of distinction, the creator of differences. Female is what is not susceptible to transformation, to life or death; she (it) is an element of plot-space, a topos, a resistance, matrix and matter.""

"Le chagrin monte en croupe et galope avec lui."

"Pour soutenir tes droits, que le ciel autorise, Abime tout plutôt ; c'est l'esprit de l'Église."

"Et le Mien et le Tien, deux frères pointilleux, Par son ordre amenant les procès et la guerre, En tous lieux de ce pas vont partager la terre ; En tous lieux, sous les noms de bon droit et de tort, Vont chez elle établir le seul droit du plus fort."

"L'honneur est comme une ile escarpée et sans bords ; On n'y peut plus rentrer dès qu'on en est dehors."

"La satire, en leçons, en nouveautés fertile, Sait seule assaisonner le plaisant et l'utile, Et, d'un vers qu'elle épure aux rayons du bons sens, Détromper les esprits des erreurs de leur temps."

"L'or même à la laideur donne un teint de beauté : Mais tout devient affreux avec la pauvreté."

"De tous les animaux qui s'élèvent dans l'air, Qui marchent sur la terre, ou nagent dans la mer, De Paris au Pérou, du Japon jusqu'à Rome, Le plus sot animal, à mon avis, c'est l'homme."

"Si vous êtes sorti de ces héros fameux, Montrez-nous cette ardeur qu'on vit briller en eux."

"La vertu, d'un cœur noble est la marque certaine."

"Let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace."

"Le plus fou souvent est le plus satisfait."

"Le plus sage est celui qui ne pense point l'être."

"N'en déplaise à ces fous nommés sages de Grèce, En ce monde il n'est point de parfaite sagesse : Tous les hommes sont fous, et, malgré tous leurs soins, Ne diffèrent entre eux que du plus ou du moins."

"Il plait a tout le monde et ne saurait se plaire."

"Je ne puis rien nommer si ce n'est par son nom ; J'appelle un chat un chat, et Rollet un fripon."

"Un fat quelquefois ouvre un avis important."

"Chaque âge a ses plaisirs, son esprit et ses mœurs."

"Le vrai peut quelquefois n'être pas vraisemblable."

"Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire."

"La vérité n'a point cet air impétueux."

"Hâtez-vous lentement ; et, sans perdre courage, Vingt fois sur le métier remettez votre ouvrage."

"Ce que l'on conçoit bien s'énonce clairement, Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisément."

"Heureux qui, dans ses vers, sait d'une voix légère Passer du grave au doux, du plaisant au sévère."

"Souvent la peur d'un mal nous conduit dans un pire."

"Tout ce qu'on dit de trop est fade et rebutant."

"Le pénible fardeau de n'avoir rien à faire."

"Rien n'est beau que le vrai : le vrai seul est aimable."

"Tenez, voilà, dit-elle, à chacun une écaille. Des sottises d'autrui nous vivons au palais : Messieurs, l'huître était bonne. Adieu. Vivez en paix."

"Tant de fiel entre-t-il dans l'âme des dévots ?"

"Le temps fuit, et nous traîne avec soi : Le moment où je parle est déjà loin de moi."

"Unlimited power is helpless, as arbitrary power is capricious. Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We can attempt nothing great, but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter: we can persevere in nothing great, but from a pride in overcoming them."

"The miscreant Hazlitt continues, I have heard, his abuses of Southey, Coleridge and myself, in the Examiner. — I hope that you do not associate with this Fellow, he is not a proper person to be admitted into respectable society, being the most perverse and malevolent Creature that ill luck has ever thrown in my way. Avoid him — hic niger est — And this, I understand, is the general opinion wherever he is known in London."

"John Lamb (the brother of Charles) once knocked down Hazlitt, who was impertinent to him; and on those who were present interfering and begging Hazlitt to shake hands and forgive him, Hazlitt said, "Well, I don't care if I do. I am a metaphysician, and do not mind a blow; nothing but an idea hurts me.""

"If Samuel Johnson was the more deliberate aphorist, Hazlitt was the more self-conscious literary architect. You quote lines from Johnson; you want to recite entire passages from Hazlitt."

"His manners are to 99 in 100 singularly repulsive—; brow-hanging, shoe-contemplative, strange. … he is, I verily believe, kindly-nature; is very of, attentive to, and patient with children; but he is jealous, gloomy, and of an irritable pride — and addicted to women, as objects of sexual indulgence."

"He who would see old Hoghton right Must view it by the pale moonlight."

"Good temper is one of the great preservers of the features."

"The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours."

"But fashion is the abortive issue of vain ostentation and exclusive egotism: it is haughty, trifling, affected, servile, despotic, mean and ambitious, precise and fantastical, all in a breath — tied to no rule, and bound to conform to every whim of the minute."

"A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man."

"Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room; nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, nor what to feel in any relation of life."

"Defoe says, that there were a hundred thousand stout country-fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse."