“For pointed satire I would Buckhurst choose,
The best good man with the worst-natured muse.”

“The best-humour'd man, with the worst-humour'd Muse.”

“The best of causes ruins as quickly as the worst; and the road to Limbo is paved with writers who have done everything—I am being sympathetic, not satiric—for the very best reasons.”

“I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.”

“Evolution does not lead to Utopia. It leads to a land in which what is best for a man may be worst for another man, or what is best for a woman may be worst for a man.”

“No, trust the Muse: she opes the good man's grave,
And lifts him to the gods.”

“If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?”

“The deepest, the intelligible, part of the nature of man is that part which does not take refuge in causality, but which chooses in freedom the good or the bad.”

“I think there's so much good in the worst of us, and so many of the worst of us get the best of us, that the rest of us aren't even worth talking about.”

“And muse on Nature with a poet's eye.”