When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf.

Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.

Beauty is a form of genius -- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation.

Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleance me in the great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.