I never was much of an oyster eater, nor can I relish them 'in naturalibus' as some do, but require a quantity of sauces, lemons, cayenne peppers, bread and butter, and so forth, to render them palatable.

When one fib becomes due as it were, you must forge another to take up the old acceptance; and so the stock of your lies in circulation inevitably multiplies, and the danger of detection increases every day.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

She lived in her past life — every letter seemed to recall some circumstance of it. How well she remembered them all! His looks and tones, his dress, what he said and how — these relics and remembrances of dead affection were all that were left her in the world.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

It is comparatively easy to leave a mistress, but very hard to be left by one.

No particular motive for living, except the custom and habit of it.