"Wordsworth – stupendous genius! Damned fool! These poets run about their ponds though they cannot fish."

"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 am a very restless creature, and I cannot stay long in one place."

"I am a very complex man, and I am full of contradictions."

"I hate mankind, for I think myself a man."