Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle. — Thomas Hardy

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all. Circumspection and devotion are a contradiction in terms.

I have seldom known a man cunning with his brush who was not simple with his tongue; or, indeed, any skill in particular that was not allied to general stupidity.

Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.