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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Jeffrey

  • As this auspicious day began the race
  • Of ev’ry virtue join’d with ev’ry grace;
  • May you, who own them, welcome its return,
  • Till excellence, like yours, again is born.
  • The years we wish, will half your charms impair;
  • The years we wish the better half will spare;
  • The victims of your eyes will bleed no more,
  • But all the beauties of your mind adore.
  • An obligation is something which constrains or induces us to act.

    God help us! it is a foolish little thing, this human life, at the best; and it is half ridiculous and half pitiful to see what importance we ascribe to it, and to its little ornaments and distinctions.

    Good-will, like a good name, is got by many actions, and lost by one.

    Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest violence.

    Satire is a composition of salt and mercury; and it depends upon the different mixture and preparation of these ingredients, that it comes out a noble medicine or a rank poison.

    Simplicity of manner is the last attainment. Men are very long afraid of being natural, from the dread of being taken for ordinary.

    The cheat ambition, eager to espouse dominion, courts it with a lying show, and shines in borrowed pomp to serve a turn.

    The disease and its medicine are like two factions in a besieged town; they tear one another to pieces, but both unite against their common enemy, nature.