It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.

You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with some one else.

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.

Quite minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.

I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius that I have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption and think it long of coming. Literally no man has more wholly outlived life than I. And still it's good fun.

Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other… to try the manners of different nations; to hear the chimes at midnight; to see the sunrise in town and country; to be converted at a revival; to circumnavigate the metaphysics, write halting verses, run a mile to see a fire, and wait all day long in the theatre to applaud Hernani.

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his mouth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.

Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.

There is but one art, to omit.

Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catch words.