If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.

Ah, nut-brown partridges! Ah, brilliant pheasants! And ah, ye poachers!--'Tis no sport for peasants.

The busy have no time for tears.

Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.

Folly loves the martyrdom of fame.

I love not man the less, but Nature more.

We have fools in all sects, and impostors in most; why should I believe mysteries no one can understand, because written by men who chose to mistake madness for inspiration and style themselves Evangelicals?