out; talent drives a brougham in
fact, genius a sun-chariot in fancy; talent keeps to earth and fattens
there, genius soars to the empyrean, to get picked by every kite that
flies; talent is the part and the venison, genius the seltzer and
souffle of life. The man who has talent sails successfully on the top of
the wave; the man with genius beats himself to pieces, fifty to one, on
the first rock he meets.

* * *

One innocent may be wrongly suspected until he is made the thing that
the libel called him.

* * *

Men shut out happiness from their schemes for the world's happiness.
They might as well try to bring flowers to bloom without the sun.

* * *

The most dastardly sin on earth is the desertion of the fallen.

* * *

Let the world abandon you, but to yourself be true.

* * *

The bread of bitterness is the food on which men grow to their fullest
stature.

* * *

Youth without faith is a day without sun.

* * *

I detest posterity--every king hates his heir.

* * *

Scandals are like dandelion seeds; they are arrow-headed and stick when
they fall, and bring forth and multiply fourfold.

* * *

The puff perfect is the puff personal--adroitly masked.

* * *

I wear the Bonnet Rouge discreetly weighed down with a fine tassel of
British prudence.

* * *

He was a master of the great art of banter. It is a marvellous force; it
kills sanctity, unveils sophistry, travesties wisdom, cuts through the
finest shield, and turns the noblest impulses to hopeless ridicule.

* * *

Immortality is dull work--a hideous statue that gets black as soot in no
time; funeral sermons that make you out a vial of revelations and
discuss the probabilities of your being in the realms of Satan; a bust
that slants you off at the shoulders and sticks you up on a bracket; a
tombstone for the canes of the curious to poke at; an occasional
attention in the way of withered immortelles or biographical
Billingsgate, and a partial preservation shared in common with mummies,
auks' eggs, snakes in bottles, and deformities in spirits of
wine:--that's posthumous fame. I must say I don't see much fun in it.

* * *

It were hard not to be wrong in philosophies when the body starves