“I have a great mind to believe in Christianity for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned.”

“I came to realize clearly that the mind is no other than the Mountain and the Rivers and the great wide Earth, the Sun and the Moon and the Sky”.”

“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.”

“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.”

“On with the dance! let joy be unconfin'd;No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meetTo chase the Glowing Hours with Flying feet.”

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,There is a rapture on the lonely shore,There is society, where none intrudes,By the deep sea, and music in its roar:I love not man the less, but Nature more”

“Wedded she some years, and to a manOf fifty, and such husbands are in plenty;And yet, I think, instead of such a ONE'Twere better to have TWO of five and twenty...”