Mere wealth, I am above it, / It is the reputation wide, / The playwright's pomp, the poet's pride / That eagerly I covet.

Oh, princes thrive on caviar, the poor on whey and curds, / And politicians, I infer, must eat their windy words. / It's crusts that feed the virtuous, it's cake that comforts sinners, / But writers live on bread and praise at Literary Dinners.

Women are the fulfilled sex. Through our children we are able to produce our own immortality, so we lack that divine restlessness which sends men charging off in pursuit of fortune or fame or an imagined Utopia. That is why we number so few geniuses among us. The wholesome oyster wears no pearl, the healthy whale no ambergris, and as long as we can keep on adding to the race, we harbor a sort of health within ourselves.

O, merry is the Optimist, With the troops of courage leaguing. But a dour trend In any friend Is somehow less fatiguing.

The mass of men live lives of quiet exasperation.

Relations are errors that Nature makes. / Your spouse you can put on the shelf. / But your friends, dear friends, are the quaint mistakes / You always commit yourself.

Getting along with men isn't what's truly important. The vital knowledge is how to get along with one man.