If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want.

Don't squander the gold of your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and the vulgar

Fruitcake is like semen, there's a lot of it about but no one wants to swallow it

There are two ways of disliking poetry, one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.

It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.

The only thing I cannot resist is temptation.

As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.