"The great advantage of being a fool is that one is always content with oneself."

"I am a very melancholy man, but I love to laugh."

"If people are to live, why die? And are our carcasses worth raising? I hope, if mine is, I shall have a better pair of legs than I have moved on these two-and-twenty years, or I shall be sadly behind …"

"I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence – this may look like affectation – but it is my real opinion – it is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake."

"I have a great contempt for all critics, and I never read their reviews."