Assuredly of all earthly conditions uncertainty is the most unblest.

Rome ... seems to me the place in the world where one can best dispense with happiness.

I never desire to know anything of the detail of political measures, lest even those which I think best should lose anything of their intrinsic value to me, by seeing what low, paltry, personal motives and base machinery and dirty hands have helped to bring them about.

When marriage is what it ought to be, it is indeed the very happiest condition of existence.

I have sometimes been haunted with the idea that it was an imperative duty, knowing what I know, and having seen what I have seen, to do all that lies in my power to show the dangers and the evils of this frightful institution.

An actor's life is the shadow of a cloud, the echo of a sound, the memory of a dream, nothing come of nothing. The finest actor does not create, he is but a translator of another man's work.

The death I should prefer would be to break my neck off the back of a good horse at a full gallop on a fine day.