Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour ... If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth?

I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world.

I like the spirit of this great London which I feel around me. Who but a coward would pass his whole life in hamlets; and for ever abandon his faculties to the eating rust of obscurity?

Give him enough rope and he will hang himself.

Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.

If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.

He is not to them what he is to me.