“But 'why then publish?' There are no rewardsOf fame or profit when the world grows weary.I ask in turn why do you play at cards?Why drink? Why read? To make some hour less dreary.It occupies me to turn back regardsOn what I've seen or pondered, sad or cheery,And what I write I cast upon the streamTo swim or sink. I have had at least my dream.”

“My Dearest Theresa,I have read this book in your garden, my love, you were absent, or else I could not have read it. It is a favourite book of mine. You will not understand these English words, and others will not understand them, which is the reason I have not scrawled them in Italian. But you will recognize the handwriting of him who passionately loved you, and you will divine that, over a book that was yours, he could only think of love.In that word, beautiful in all languages, but most so in yours, Amor mio, is comprised my existence here and thereafter. I feel I exist here, and I feel that I shall exist hereafter – to what purpose you will decide; my destiny rests with you, and you are a woman, eighteen years of age, and two out of a convent, I wish you had stayed there, with all my heart, or at least, that I had never met you in your married state.But all this is too late. I love you, and you love me, at least, you say so, and act as if you did so, which last is a great consolation in all events. But I more than love you, and cannot cease to love you. Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and ocean divide us, but they never will, unless you wish it.”

“The kiss, dear maid ! thy lip has leftShall never part from mine,Till happier hours restore the giftUntainted back to thine. Thy parting glance, which fondly beams,An equal love may see:The tear that from thine eyelid streamsCan weep no change in me. I ask no pledge to make me blestIn gazing when alone;Nor one memorial for a breast,Whose thoughts are all thine own. Nor need I write --- to tell the taleMy pen were doubly weak:Oh ! what can idle words avail,Unless the heart could speak ? By day or night, in weal or woe,That heart, no longer free,Must bear the love it cannot show,And silent ache for thee.”

“Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire - in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?”

“The thorns which I have reap'd are of the treeI planted; they have torn me, and I bleed.I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.”

“I am so changeable, being everything by turns and nothing long - such a strange melange of good and evil.”

“When people say, "I've told you fifty times," / They mean to scold, and very often do; / When poets say, "I've written fifty rhymes," / They make you dread that they 'II recite them too;In gangs of fifty, thieves commit their crimes; / At fifty love for love is rare, 't is true, / But then, no doubt, it equally as true is, / A good deal may be bought for fifty Louis.”