174 quotes
Away with funeral music—set
The pipe to powerful lips—
The cup of life's for him that drinks
And not for him that sips.
At Boulogne (1872)
Every night my prayers I say,
And get my dinner every day,
And every day that I've been good,
I get an orange after food.
There's just ae thing I cannae bear,
An' that's my conscience.
Underwoods (1887)
God, if this were enough,
That I see things bare to the buff.
Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896)
The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
Youth now flees on feathered foot.
The pleasant Land of Counterpane.
There is but one art, to omit.
People trifle with love. Now, I deny that love is a strong passion. Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle, if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living.
The New Arabian Nights (1882)
There are circumstances in which even the least energetic of mankind learn to behave with vigour and decision; and the most cautious forget their prudence and embrace foolhardy resolutions.
The New Arabian Nights (1882)
Give us grace and strength to forbear and to persevere. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind, spare to us our friends, soften to us our enemies.
Who comes tonight? We ope the doors in vain
Underwoods (1887)
Wherever a man is, there will be a lie.
The Silverado Squatters (1883)
Man is not truly one, but truly two.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
Already an old man, he [Samuel Johnson] ventured on his Highland tour; and his heart, bound with triple brass, did not recoil before twenty-seven individual cups of tea.
Aes Triplex (1878)
The doom and burthen of our life is bound forever on man's shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)
We should wipe two words from our vocabulary: gratitude and charity. In real life, help is given out of friendship, or it is not valued; it is received from the hand of friendship, or it is resented.
Across the Plains (1892)
For God's sake give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself! As for the others, the irony of facts shall take it out of their hands, and make fools of them in downright earnest, ere the farce be over.
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)
It is very nice to think
The world is full of meat and drink
With little children saying grace
In every Christian kind of place.
When I am grown to man's estate
I shall be very proud and great
And tell the other girls and boys
Not to meddle with my toys.