"A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer."

"I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from."

"Our life is not so much threatened, As our perception."

"Imitation is suicide."

"A man's library is a sort of harem."

"Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know."

"The art of conversation consist as much in listening politely, as in talking agreeably."

"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once."

"There's no bottom, none, in my voluptuousness: Your wives, your daughters, your matrons and your maids, could not fill up the cistern of my lust."

"Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits."

"She had wit, she had grace, she had beauty; But above all, she had truth."

"Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life - in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color."