Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.

We do not go to the theatre like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it.

Oh stay! oh stay! Joy so seldom weaves a chain Like this to-night, that oh 't is pain To break its links so soon.

My theory is to enjoy life, but my practice is against it.

The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend.

We love to chew the cud of a foregone vision; to collect the scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over again, with firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies.

Literature is a bad crutch, but a good walking-stick.