I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you will find … - Charles Lamb

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other people, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is the only true Time, which a man can properly call his own — that which he has all to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people's Time, not his.

I conceive disgust at those impertinent and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must shortly be." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters!

Dream not...of having tasted all the grandeur & wildness of Fancy, till you have gone mad.

Stinking’st of the stinking kind,
Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind,
Africa, that brags her foyson,
Breeds no such prodigious poison,
Henbane, nightshade, both together,
Hemlock, aconite—