"It is with literature as with law or empire – an established name is an estate in tenure, or a throne in possession."

"Were I to be asked what it is that gives me the most intense delight, I should say a conversation with a beautiful woman."

"That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful."

"Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not?"

"I have a very strong opinion that the world is a gigantic tomb, and I am one of the corpses."