Painters and poets have liberty to lie.

Dare to be honest and fear no labor. ... Opera is where a man gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings.

I look on the opposite sex with something like the admiration with which I regard the starry sky on a frosty December night. I admire the beauty of the Creator's workmanship, I am charmed with the wild but graceful eccentricity of the motions, and then I wish both of them goodnight.

Firmness in enduring and exertion is a character I always wish to possess. I have always despised the whining yelp of complaint and cowardly resolve.

Then gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman; Though they may gang a kennin' wrang, To step aside is human.

I want someone to laugh with me, someone to be grave with me, someone to please me and help my discrimination with his or her own remark, and at times, no doubt, to admire my acuteness and penetration.

Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white-then melts for ever . . .