Love is cruel as the grave.

A man may be a great statesman, and yet dislike his wife, and like somebody else's. A man may be a great hero, and yet he may have an unseemly passion, or an unpaid tailor. But the British public does not understand this. ... It thinks, unhappily or happily as you may choose to consider, that genius should keep the whole ten commandments. Now, genius is conspicuous for breaking them.

Hypocrites weep, and you cannot tell their tears from those of saints; but no bad man ever laughed sweetly yet.

There is no more terrible woe upon earth than the woe of the stricken brain, which remembers the days of its strength, the living light of its reason, the sunrise of its proud intelligence, and knows that these have passed away like a tale that is told.

There is no applause that so flatters a man as that which he wrings from unwilling throats.

I have known men who have been sold and bought a hundred times, who have only got very fat and very comfortable in the process of exchange.

When passion and habit long lie in company it is only slowly and with incredulity that habit awakens to finds its companion fled, itself alone.