Great Throughts Treasury

"Hushed as the falling dews, whose noiseless showers impearl the folded leaves of evening flowers."

"I always take blushing either for a sign of guilt, or of ill breeding."

"I am always of the opinion with the learned, if they speak first."

"I am tipsy with laughing."

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

"I chiefly made it my own care to initiate her very infancy in the rudiments of virtue, and to impress upon her tender years a young odium and aversion to the very sight of men."

"I confess freely to you I could never look long upon a monkey, without very mortifying reflections."

"I could find it in my heart to marry thee, purely to be rid of thee."

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

"I hope you do not think me prone to an iteration of nuptials."

"I know a lady that loves talking so incessantly, she won't give an echo fair play; she has that everlasting rotation of tongue that an echo must wait till she dies before it can catch her last words!"

"I know that's a secret, for it’s whispered everywhere."

"I like her with all her faults: nay, like her for her faults. Her follies are so natural, or so artful, that they become her; and those affections which in another woman would be odious serve but to make her more agreeable."

"I nauseate walking 'tis a country diversion I loathe the country"

"If I can find Cerebus a sop, I shall be at rest for one day."

"If there's delight in love, 'Tis when I see that heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me."

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

"I'll give you revenge another time, when you are not so indifferent; you are thinking of something else now, and play too negligently; the coldness of a losing gamester lessens the pleasure of the winner. I'd no more play with a man that slighted his ill fortune, than I'd make love to a woman who undervalued the loss of their reputation."

"In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers anybody else to rail at me."

"Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, and black despair succeeds brown study."

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

"It is, alas! the poor prerogative of greatness, to be wretched and unpitied."

"Married in haste we may repent at leisure. Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak."

"Married in haste, we repent at leisure."

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

"Music alone with sudden charms can bind the wand'ring sense, and calm the troubled mind."

"Nature, to each allots his proper Sphere, But, that forsaken, we like Comets err Toss'd thro' the Void, by some rude Shock we're broke, And all our boasted Fire is lost in Smoke"

"Never go to bed angry, stay up and fight."

"No mask like open truth to cover lies,As to go naked is the best disguise."

"No, I'm no enemy to learning; it hurts not me."

"Nothing but you can lay hold of my mind, and that can lay hold of nothing but you."

"O ay, letters - I had letters - I am persecuted with letters - I hate letters - nobody knows how to write letters and yet one has 'em, one does not know why - they serve one to pin up one's hair."

"O call not to my mind what you have done! It sets a debt of that account before me, which shows me poor and bankrupt even in hopes!"

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

"O sleep, why dost thou leave me? why thy visionary joy remove?"

"O, she is the antidote to desire."

"Of those few fools, who with ill stars are curst, sure scribbling fools, called poets, fare the worst: for they're a sort of fools which fortune makes, and, after she has made them fools, forsakes. With nature's oafs 'tis quite a different case, for fortune favours all her idiot race. In her own nest the cuckoo eggs we find, over which she broods to hatch the changeling kind: no portion for her own she has to spare, so much she dotes on her adopted care. Poets are bubbles, by the town drawn in, suffered at first some trifling stakes to win: but what unequal hazards do they run! Each time they write they venture all they've won: the squire that's buttered still, is sure to be undone. This author, heretofore, has found your favour, but pleads no merit from his past behaviour. To build on that might prove a vain presumption, should grant to poets made admit resumption, and in parnassus he must lose his seat, if that be found a forfeited estate."

"Pious Selinda goes to prayers, if I but ask the favor; and yet the tender fool's in tears, when she believes I'll leave her. Would I were free from this restraint, or else had hopes to win her; would she would make of me a saint, or I of her a sinner."

"Poetry, the eldest sister of all arts, and parent of most."

"Rather courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play."

"Read and take your nourishment in at your eyes; shut up your mouth and chew the cud of understanding."

"Read, read, sirrah, and refine your appetite; learn to live upon instruction; frost your mind and mortify your flesh."

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

"Rise to meet him in a pretty disorder - yes- O, nothing is more alluring than a levee from a couch in some confusion."

"Say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved."

"See how love and murder will out."

"Shallow artifice begets suspicion, and like a cobweb veil, but thinly shades the face of thy design, alone disguising what should have ne'er been seen, imperfect mischief."

"She is chaste who was never asked the question."

"She likes herself, yet others hates for that which in herself she prizes and while she laughs at them, forgets she is the thing that she despises."

"She once used me with that insolence, that in revenge I took her to pieces sifted her, and separated her failings I studied 'em, and got 'em by rote. The catalogue was so large, that I was not without hopes, one day or other to hate her heartily."