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

Pope

A generous friendship no cold medium knows,

Burns with one love, with one resentment glows;

One should our interests and our passions be,

My friend must hate the man that injures me.

A little learning is a dangerous thing!

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts,

In fearless youth we tempt the height of arts,

While from the bounded level of our mind

Short views we take, nor mind the lengths behind;

But more advanced, behold with strange surprise,

New distant scenes of endless science rise.

A long, exact, and serious comedy;

In every scene some moral let it teach,

And, if it can, at once both please and preach.

A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes;

At every word a reputation dies.

A wise physician, skill’d our wounds to heal,

Is more than armies to the public weal.

About this spring of ancient fame say true,

The dapper elves their moonlight sports renew;

Their pigmy king and little fairy queen

In circling dances gamboll’d on the green,

With tuneful sprites a merry concert made,

And airy music warbled through the shade.

Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,

A timorous foe and a suspicious friend.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;

That chang’d thro’ all, and yet in all the same,

Great in the earth as in, th’ ethereal frame;

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;

Lives thro’ all life, extends thro’ all extent,

Spreads undivided, operates unspent;

Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,

As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart.

All Nature is but art unknown to thee;

All chance direction, which thou canst not see;

All discord, harmony not understood;

All partial evil, universal good;

And spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,

One truth is clear, Whatever is is right.

And binding nature fast in fate,

Left free the human will.

And soften’d sounds along the waters die:

Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play.

And yet believe me, good as well as ill,

Woman’s at best a contradiction still.

Heaven, when it strives to polish all it can

Its last best work, but forms a softer man.

And you, brave Cobham! to the latest breath

Shall feel your ruling passion strong in death.

As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath,

Receives the lurking principle of death;

The young disease, that must subdue at length,

Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength.

As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake;

The centre mov’d, a circle straight succeeds,

Another still, and still another spreads.

Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine,

Earth for whose use? Pride answers, ’Tis for mine

For me kind nature wakes her genial power,

Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower.

At every trifle scorn to take offence;

That always shows great pride or little sense.

At length corruption, like a general flood,

(So long by watchful ministers withstood,)

Shall deluge all; and avarice creeping on,

Spread like a low-born mist, and blot the sun.

Authors are partial to their wit, ’tis true,

But are not critics to their judgment, too?

Avoid Extremes; and shun the fault of such

Who still are pleas’d too little or too much.

Be niggards of advice on no pretense;

For the worst avarice is that of sense.

Be not the first by whom the new is tried,

Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

Be silent always, when you doubt your sense,

And speak, tho’ sure, with seeming diffidence.

Be thou the first true merit to befriend,

His praise is lost who waits till all commend.

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law

Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw;

Some livelier plaything gives his Youth delight,

A little louder, but as empty quite;

Scarfs, Garters, Gold amuse his riper stage;

And beads and pray’r-books are the toys of age;

Pleas’d with this Bauble still, as that before;

Till tir’d he sleeps, and Life’s poor play is o’er.

Blest paper-credit! last and best supply!

That lends corruption lighter wings to fly.

Bright as the sun her eyes the gazers strike,

And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.

But blind to former as to future fate,

What mortal knows his pre-existent state?

But honest instinct comes a volunteer;

Sure never to o’er-shoot, but just to hit,

While still too wide or short in human wit.

But Satan now is wiser than of yore,

And tempts by making rich, not making poor.

But see, Orion sheds unwholesome dews;

Arise, the pines a noxious shade diffuse;

Sharp Boreas blows, and nature feels decay,

Time conquers all, and we must time obey.

But see, the shepherds shun the noonday heat,

The lowing herds to murmuring brooks retreat,

To closer shades the panting flocks remove;

Ye gods! and is there no relief for love?

But to the world no bugbear is so great,

As want of figure and a small estate.

But touch me, and no minister so sore.

Whoe’er offends, at some unlucky time

Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme,

Sacred to ridicule his whole life long,

And the sad burthen of some merry song.

But true expression, like th’ unchanging sun,

Clears and improves whate’er it shines upon;

It gilds all objects, but it alters none.

But would you sing, and rival Orpheus’ strain,

The wond’ring forests soon should dance again;

The moving mountains hear the powerful call,

And headlong streams hang listening in their fall!

But you with pleasure own your errors past,

And make each day a critic on the last.

By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,

By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,

By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,

By strangers honored, and by strangers mourned.

By music, minds an equal temper know,

Nor swell too high, nor sink too low:

If in the breast tumultuous joys arise,

Music her soft, assuasive voice applies;

Or, when the soul is press’d with cares,

Exalts her in enliv’ning airs.

Cease to consult, the time for action calls,

War, horrid war, approaches to your walls!

Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;

Still by himself abused and disabused;

Created half to rise, and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;

The glory, jest and riddle of the world!

Choose a firm cloud before it fall, and in it

Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute.

Condemned whole years in absence to deplore,

And image charms he must behold no more.

Condition, circumstance, is not the thing;

Bliss is the same in subject or in king.

Count all th’ advantage prosperous Vice attains,

’Tis but what Virtue flies from and disdains:

And grant the bad what happiness they would,

One they must want—which is, to pass for good.

Court-virtues bear, like gems, the highest rate,

Born where Heav’n’s influence scarce can penetrate.

In life’s low vale, the soil the virtues like,

They please as beauties, here as wonders strike.

Cursed be the verse, how well soe’er it flow,

That tends to make one worthy man my foe.

Curst be the verse, how well soe’er it flow,

That tends to make one worthy man my foe,

Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear,

Or from the soft-ey’d virgin steal a tear.

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,

And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;

Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,

Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;

Alike reserv’d to blame, or to commend,

A tim’rous foe, and a suspicious friend.

Destroy his fib, or sophistry—in vain!

The creature’s at his dirty work again.

Devotion’s self shall steal a thought from heaven,

One human tear shall drop, and be forgiven.

Envy will merit as its shade pursue,

But like a shadow proves the substance true.

Envy, to which th’ ignoble mind’s a slave,

Is emulation in the learn’d or brave.

Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,

As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.

Expression is the dress of thought, and still

Appears more decent as more suitable;

A vile conceit in pompous words express’d,

Is like a clown in regal purple dress’d.

Extremes in nature equal good produce,

Extremes in man concur to general use.

Eye nature’s walks, shoot folly as it flies,

And catch the manners, living as they rise;

Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;

But vindicate the ways of God to man.

Faints into airs and languishes with pride;

On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe,

Wrapt in a gown for sickness and for show.

Father of All! in every age,

In every clime ador’d.

By saint, by savage, and by sage,

Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

For forms of government let fools contest;

Whate’er is best administer’d is best.

For I, who holds sage Homer’s rule the best,

Welcome the coming, speed the going guest.

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;

His can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.

For not the anger of the wise to raise;

Those best can bear reproof who merit praise.

For spirits, freed from mortal laws, with ease

Assume what sexes and what shapes they please.

For virtue’s self may too much zeal be had:

The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.

For what has Virro painted, built, and planted?

Only to show how many tastes he wanted.

What brought Sir Visto’s ill-got wealth to waste?

Some demon whispered, “Visto! have a taste.”

For wit and judgment often are at strife,

Though meant each other’s aid, like man and wife.

Force first made conquest, and that conquest law,

Till Superstition taught the tyrant awe,

Then shar’d the tyranny, then lent it aid,

And gods of conqu’rors, slaves of subjects made:

She, ’midst the lightning’s blaze and thunder’s sound,

When rock’d the mountains, and when groan’d the ground,

She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray

To Power unseen, and mightier fat than they:

She, from the rending earth and bursting skies,

Saw gods descend, and fiends infernal rise;

Here fixed the dreadful, there the blest abodes;

Fear made her devils, and weak hope her gods.

Form’d by thy converse, happily to steer

From grave to gay, from lively to severe.

Fortune in men has some small difference made,

One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade.

From loveless youth to unrespected age

No passion gratified, except her rage;

So much the fury still outran the wit,

The pleasure miss’d her, and the scandal hit.

Get place and wealth, if possible, with grace

If not, by any means get wealth and place.

Glory and gain the industrious tribe provoke;

And gentle dullness ever loves a joke.

Good sense, which only is the gift of heaven,

And though no science, fairly worth the seven.

Hail, wayward Queen!

Who rule the sex to fifty from fifteen;

Parent of vapors, and of female wit,

Who give the hysteric, or poetic fit,

On various tempers act by various ways,

Make some take physic, others scribble plays:

Who cause the proud their visits to delay,

And send the godly in a pet to pray.

Happy the man, whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air

In his own ground.

Hear how the birds, on ev’ry blooming spray,

With joyous musick wake the dawning day!

Heav’n first taught letters for some wretch’s aid,

Some banish’d lover, or some captive maid.

Heaven first taught letters for some wretch’s aid,

Some banish’d lover, or some captive maid;

They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,

Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires;

The virgin’s wish, without her fears, impart;

Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart;

Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,

And waft a sigh from Indus to the pole.

Heaven forming each on other to depend,

A master, or a servant, or a friend,

Bids each on other for assistance call,

Till one man’s weakness grows the strength of all.

Heaven gave to woman the peculiar grace

To spin, to weep, and cully human race.

Hence the fool’s paradise, the statesman’s scheme,

The air-built castle, and the golden dream,

The maid’s romantic wish, the chemist’s flame,

And poet’s vision of eternal fame.

Here Ceres’ gifts in waving prospect stand,

And nodding tempt the joyful reaper’s hand.

Here, thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,

Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea.

His gardens next your admiration call,

On every side you look, behold the wall!

No pleasing intricacies intervene,

No artful wildness to perplex the scene;

Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,

And half the platform just reflects the other.

The suffering eye inverted nature sees,

Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees;

With here a fountain, never to be play’d,

And there a summer-house that knows no shade.

Horses (thou say’st) and asses men may try,

And ring suspected vessels ere they buy;

But wives, a random choice, untried they take;

They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake;

Then, nor till then, the veil’s removed away,

And all the woman glares in open day.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

How shall I lose the sin yet keep the sense,

And love th’ offender, yet detest the offence?

I am his highness’ dog at Kew;

Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

I was not born for courts or great affairs;

I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers.

If I am right, Thy grace impart,

Still in the right to stay;

If I am wrong, O teach my heart

To find that better way!

If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined,

The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind;

Or, ravished with the whistling of a name,

See Cromwell, damned to everlasting fame!

If to her share some female errors fall

Look on her face, and you’ll forget ’em all.

Immodest words admit of no defence

For want of decency is want of sense.

In cold December fragrant chaplets blow,

And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow.

In every work regard the writer’s end,

Since none can compass more than they intend.

In faith and hope the world will disagree,

But all mankind’s concern is charity;

All must be false that thwart this one great end,

And all of God that bless mankind or mend.

In genial spring, beneath the quiv’ring shade,

Where cooling vapors breathe along the mead,

The patient fisher takes his silent stand,

Intent, his angle trembling in his hand;

With looks unmoved, he hopes the scaly breed,

And eyes the dancing cork and bending reed.

In pride, in reas’ning pride, our error lies;

All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.

Pride still is aiming at the bless’d abodes,

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,

Aspiring to be angels men rebel;

And who but wishes to invert the laws

Of order, sins against th’ Eternal cause.

In that soft season, when descending show’rs

Call forth the greens, and wake the rising flow’rs;

When opening buds salute the welcome day,

And earth relenting feels the genial ray.

In various talk th’ instructive hours they past,

Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last;

One speaks the glory of the British queen,

And one describes a charming Indian screen;

A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes;

At every word a reputation dies.

Intestine war no more our passions wage,

And giddy factions bear away their rage.

Is that a birthday? ’tis, alas! too clear;

’Tis but the funeral of the former year.

Judge not of actions by their mere effect;

Dive to the centre, and the cause detect;

Great deeds from meanest springs may take their course,

And smallest virtues from a mighty source.

Judges and senates have been bought for gold;

Esteem and love were never to be sold.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know,

Virtue alone is happiness below.

Ladies, like variegated tulips, show

’Tis to their changes half their charms we owe.

Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield;

Learn from the beasts the physic of the field;

Thy arts of building from the bee receive;

Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave.

Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;

You’ve play’d, and lov’d, and ate, and drank your fill;

Walk sober off, before a sprightlier age

Comes titt’ring on, and shoves you from the stage.

Leave such to trifle with more grace and ease,

Whom Folly pleases, and whose Follies please.

Led by my hand, he saunter’d Europe round,

And gather’d every vice on Christian ground.

Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame,

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it Fame.

Let us (since life can little more supply

Than just to look about us and to die)

Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man;

A mighty maze! but not without a plan.

Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne,

They rise, they break, and to that sea return.

Like doctors thus, when much dispute has past,

We find our tenets just the same at last.

Line after line my gushing eyes o’erflow,

Led thro’ a sad variety of woe;

Now warm in love, now with’ring in my bloom,

Lost in a convent’s solitary gloom!

Lo! the poor Indian—whose untutor’d mind

Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind;

His soul proud science never taught to stray

Far as the solar walk or milky way;

Yet simple nature to his hope has given,

Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heav’n.

Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure’s smiling train,

Hate, fear, and grief, the family of pain;

These, mix’d with art, and to due bounds confin’d,

Make and maintain the balance of the mind:

The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife

Gives all the strength and color of our life.

Manners with fortunes, humors turn with climes,

Tenets with books and principles with times.

Mark what unvary’d laws preserve each state,

Laws wise as Nature, and as fixed as Fate.

Me let the tender office long engage

To rock the cradle of reposing age;

With lenient arts extend a mother’s breath,

Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death;

Explore the thought, explain the asking eye!

And keep awhile one parent from the sky.

Men must be taught as if you taught them not,

And things unknown propos’d as things forgot.

Men, some to business, some to pleasure take,

*****

Men, some to quiet, some to public strife,

But every lady would be queen for life.

Modest plainness sets off sprightly wit,

For works may have more wit than does ’em good,

As bodies perish through excess of blood.

Music resembles poetry; in each

Are nameless graces which no methods teach,

And which a master-hand alone can reach.

Music the fiercest grief can charm,

And fate’s severest rage disarm.

Music can soften pain to ease,

And make despair and madness please;

Our joys below it can improve,

And antedate the bliss above.

Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night.

God said “Let Newton be”! and all was light.

Nature made every fop to plague his brother,

Just as one beauty mortifies another.

Never elated while one man’s oppress’d;

Never dejected while another’s blessed.

Next, o’er his books his eyes began to roll,

In pleasing memory of all he stole,

How here he sipp’d, how there he plunder’d snug,

And suck’d all o’er, like an industrious bug.

Not always actions show the man; we find

Who does a kindness is not therefore kind.

Not chaos-like together crush’d and bruis’d,

But, as the world, harmoniously confus’d,

Where order in variety we see,

And where, though all things differ, all agree.

Now deep in ocean sunk the lamp of light,

And drew behind the cloudy veil of night.

O let us still the secret joy partake,

To follow virtue even for virtue’s sake.

O! bless’d with temper, whose unclouded ray

Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day;

She who can own a sister’s charms, or hear

Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear;

She who ne’er answers till a husband cools,

Of, if she rules him, never shows she rules.

O’er the twilight groves and dusky caves,

Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves,

Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws

A death-like silence and a dread repose;

Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,

Shades ev’ry flower, and darkens ev’ry green;

Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,

And breathes a browner horror on the woods.

Of all the causes that conspire to blind

Man’s erring judgment, and misguide the mind,

What the weak head with strongest bias rules,

Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

Of little use, the man you may suppose,

Who says in verse what others say in prose;

Yet let me show a poet’s of some weight,

And (though no soldier) useful to the state,

What will a child learn sooner than a song?

What better teach a foreigner the tongue?

What’s long or short, each accent where to place

And speak in public with some sort of grace?

Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild;

In Wit a man; Simplicity, a child.

Offend her, and she knows not to forgive;

Oblige her, and she’ll hate you while you live.

Oh blindness to the future! kindly given,

That each may fill the circle mark’d by heav’n;

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish, or a sparrow fall.

Oh! be thou blest with all that Heaven can send,

Long health, long youth, long pleasure—and a friend.

Oh! blest with temper, whose unclouded ray

Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day.

Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise,

By mountains pil’d on mountains to the skies?

Heav’n still with laughter the vain toil surveys,

And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.

Oh, when shall Britain, conscious of her claim,

Stand emulous of Greek and Roman fame?

In living medals see her wars enroll’d,

And vanquished realms supply recording gold?

Old politicians chew on wisdom past,

And totter on in business to the last.

On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail,

Reason the card, but passion is the gale.

On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe,

Wrapt in a gown, for sickness and for show.

One master-passion in the breast,

Like Aaron’s serpent, swallows up the rest.

One science only will one genius fit,

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

One self-approving hour whole years outweighs

Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas.

One solid dish his weekday meal affords,

An added pudding solemniz’d the Lord’s.

Or looks on heav’n with more than mortal eyes,

Bids his free soul expatiate in the skies,

Amid her kindred stars familiar roam,

Survey the region, and confess her home.

Others import yet nobler arts from France,

Teach kings to fiddle, and make senates dance.

Our grandsire, ere of Eve possess’d,

Alone, and e’en in Paradise unblest,

With mournful looks the blissful scenes survey’d,

And wander’d in the solitary shade;

The Maker saw, took pity, and bestow’d

Woman, the last, the best reserv’d of God.

Our plenteous streams a various race supply,

The bright-eye perch with fins of Tyrian dye,

The silver eel, in shining volumes roll’d,

The yellow carp, in scales bedropp’d with gold,

Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains,

And pikes, the tyrants of the wat’ry plains.

Our rural ancestors, with little blest,

Patient of labor when the end was rest,

Indulg’d the day that hous’d their annual grain,

With feasts, and off’rings, and a thankful strain.

Papillia, wedded to her amorous spark,

Sighs for the shades—“How charming is a park?”

A park is purchas’d, but the fair he sees

All bath’d in tears—“O odious, odious trees!”

Pleas’d to look forward, pleas’d to look behind,

And count each birthday with a grateful mind.

Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,

Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.

Pour the full tide of eloquence along,

Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong.

Pretty! in amber to observe the forms

Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms!

The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,

But wonder how the devil they got there.

Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began,

A mighty hunter, and his prey was man.

Reason raise o’er instinct as you can,

In this ’tis God directs, in that ’tis man.

Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,

Lie in three words,—health, peace, and competence.

Reason, however able, cool at best,

Cares not for service, or but serves when prest,

Stays till we call, and then not often near.

Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires,

And unawares Morality expires.

Riches, like insects, when conceal’d they lie,

Wait but for wings, and in their season fly.

Who sees pale Mammon pine amidst his store,

Sees but a backward steward for the poor;

This year a reservoir, to keep and spare;

The next a fountain, spouting thro’ his heir

In lavish streams to quench a country’s thirst,

And men and dogs shall drink him till they burst.

Satire or sense, alas! can it feel?

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

Satire’s my weapon, but I’m too discreet

To run amuck and tilt at all I meet.

Say first, of God above or man below,

What can we reason but from what we know?

Say why are beauties praised and honored most,

The wise man’s passion and the vain man’s Toast.

Search then the ruling passion; there alone

The wild are constant, and the cunning known;

The fool consistent, and the false sincere:

Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.

See Christians, Jews, one heavy Sabbath keep,

And all the western world believe and sleep.

See from the brake the whirring pheasant springs,

And mounts exulting on triumphant wings;

Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound,

Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground.

See how the World its Veterans rewards!

A Youth of Frolics, an old Age of Cards;

Fair to no purpose, artful to no end,

Young without Lovers, old without a Friend;

A Fop their Passion, but their Prize a Sot;

Alive ridiculous, and dead forgot.

See sin in state, majestically drunk;

Proud as a peeress, prouder as a punk.

See the wild waste of all-devouring years!

How Rome her own sad sepulchre appears,

With nodding arches, broken temples spread!

The very tombs now vanished like their dead!

See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth,

All matter quick, and bursting into birth.

Above, how high! progressive life may go!

Around, how wide; how deep extend below!

Vast chain of being! which from God began,

Nature’s ethereal, human, angel, man,

Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,

No glass can reach, from infinite to Thee,

From Thee to nothing.

Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;

Reason’s comparing balance rules the whole.

Man, but for that, no action could attend,

And, but for this, were active to no end:

Fix’d like a plant on his peculiar spot,

To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot;

Or, meteor-like, flame lawless thro’ the void,

Destroying others, by himself destroy’d.

Shakespeare (whom you and every playhouse bill

Style the divine, the matchless, what you will)

Far gain, not glory, wing’d his roving flight

And grew immortal in his own despite.

She saw her sons with purple death expire,

Her sacred domes involved in rolling fire,

A dreadful series of intestine wars,

Inglorious triumphs and dishonest scars.

She who ne’er answers till a husband cools,

Or, if she rules him, never shews she rules;

Charms by accepting, by submitting sways,

Yet has her humour most when she obeys.

Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigu’d I said;

Tie up the knocker, say I’m sick, I’m dead.

Sleep and death, two twins of winged race,

Of matchless swiftness, but of silent pace.

Soft o’er the shrouds aerial whispers breathe,

That seemed but zephyrs to the train beneath.

Some place the bliss in action, some in ease,

Those call it pleasure, and contentment these.

Some praise at morning what they blame at night,

But always think the last opinion right.

Some to conceit alone their taste confine,

And glittering thoughts struck out at ev’ry line;

Pleas’d with a work where nothing’s just or fit;

One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.

Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose,

That well-known name awakens all my woes.

Sped the soft intercourse from soul to soul

And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.

Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,

And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.

Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere,

In action faithful, and in honor clear;

Who broke no promise, served no private end,

Who gain’d no title, and who lost no friend;

Ennobled by himself, by all approv’d,

And prais’d, unenvied, by the muse he lov’d.

Taste, that eternal wanderer, which flies

From head to ears, and now from ears to eyes.

Teach me to feel another’s woe,

To hide the fault I see;

That mercy I to others show,

That mercy show to me.

***th’ approach of night

The skies yet blushing with departing light,

When falling dews with spangles deck’d the glade,

And the low sun had lengthen’d ev’ry shade.

The balmy zephyrs, silent since her death,

Lament the ceasing of a sweeter breath.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,

With loads of learned lumber in his head.

The dances ended, all the fairy train

For pinks and daisies search’d the plain.

The difference is as great between

The optics seeing as the objects seen.

All manners take a tincture from our own;

Or come discolor’d through our passions shown;

Or fancy’s beam enlarges, multiplies,

Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.

The flying rumours gather’d as they roll’d,

Scarce any tale was sooner heard than told;

And all who told it added something new,

And all who heard it made enlargements too.

The generous Critic fann’d the Poet’s fire,

And taught the world with reason to admire.

The grave Sir Gilbert holds it for a rule,

That ev’ry man in want is knave or fool.

“God cannot love (says Blunt, with tearless eyes)

The wretch he starves”—and piously denies;

But the good bishop, with a meeker air,

Admits and leaves them Providence’s care.

The heart resolves this matter in a trice,

“Men only feel the smart, but not the vice.”

The hour conceal’d and so remote the fear,

Death still draws nearer, never seeming near.

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,

And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,

Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

The spider’s touch, how exquisitely fine!

Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.

The time shall come, when, free as seas or wind,

Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind,

Whole nations enter with each swelling tide,

And seas but join the regions they divide;

Earth’s distant ends our glory shall behold,

And the new world launch forth to seek the old.

The world recedes; it disappears!

Heav’n opens on my eyes! my ears

With sounds seraphic ring:

Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!

The world with calumny abounds,

The whitest virtue slander wounds;

There are whose joy is, night and day,

To talk a character away:

Eager from rout to rout they haste,

To blast the generous and the chaste,

And hunting reputations down,

Proclaim their triumphs through the town

What mind’s in such a base employment

To feel the slightest self-enjoyment!

Then sing by turns, by turns the Muses sing;

Now hawthorns blossom.

There affectation, with a sickly mien,

Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen.

There swims no goose so gray, but soon or late

She finds some honest gander for her mate.

Think not, when woman’s transient breath is fled,

That all her vanities at once are dead;

Succeeding vanities she still regards,

And though she plays no more, o’erlooks the cards.

Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive,

And love of Ombre, after death survive.

For when the fair in all their pride expire,

To their first elements their souls retire:

The sprites of fiery termagants in flame

Mount up, and take a salamander’s name.

Soft yielding minds to water glide away,

And sip, with nymphs, their elemental tea.

The graver prude sinks downward to a gnome,

In search of mischief still on earth to roam.

The light coquettes in sylphs aloft repair,

And sport and flutter in the fields of air.

This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,

Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind

In equal curls, and well conspir’d to deck,

With shining ringlets, the smooth ivory neck.

Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,

And mighty hearts are held in slender chains,

With hairy springes we the birds betray,

Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey.

Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,

Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown,

Thus unlamented let me die;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

Tell where I lie.

Thus when we view some well-proportion’d dome,

*****

No single parts unequally surprise,

All comes united to th’ admiring eyes.

Thus, day by day, and month by month, we pass’d;

It pleas’d the Lord to take my spouse at last.

I tore my gown, I soil’d my locks with dust,

And beat my breasts—as wretched widows must.

Before my face my handkerchief I spread,

To hide the flood of tears I did—not shed.

’Tis education forms the common mind,

Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.

’Tis hard to say if greater want of skill

Appear in writing or in judging ill;

But, of the two less dang’rous is th’ offence

To tire our patience than mislead our sense.

’Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,

But the joint force and full result of all.

’Tis not enough your counsel still be true,

Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.

*****

Without good breeding, truth is disapprov’d;

That only makes superior sense belov’d.

’Tis strange the miser should his cares employ

To gain those riches he can ne’er enjoy.

’Tis thus the mercury of man is fix’d,

Strong grows the virtue with his nature mix’d.

’Tis use alone that sanctifies expense

And splendor borrows all her rays from sense.

’Tis with our judgments as our watches; none

Are just alike, yet each believes his own.

To balance fortune by a just expense,

Join with Economy, Magnificence.

To heirs unknown descends th’ unguarded store,

Or wanders, heaven-directed, to the poor.

To Him no high, no low, no great, no small;

He fills, He bounds, connects and equals all!

To this sad shrine, whoe’er thou art! draw near,

Here lies the friend most lov’d, the son most dear;

Who ne’er knew joy but friendship might divide,

Or gave his father grief but when he died.

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,

To raise the genius, and to mend the heart;

To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold,

Live o’er each scene, and be what they behold—

For this the tragic Muse first trod the stage.

To what base ends, and by what abject ways,

Are mortals urg’d through sacred lust of praise!

Ah, ne’er so dire a thirst of glory boast,

Nor in the critic let the man be lost.

To whom can riches give repute or trust,

Content or pleasure, but the good and just?

Judges and senates have been bought for gold,

Esteem and love were never to be sold.

Trace science then, with modesty thy guide;

First strip off all her equipage of pride;

Deduct what is but vanity, or dress,

Or learning’s luxury, or idleness;

Or tricks to show the stretch of human brain,

Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain;

Expunge the whole, or lop th’ excrescent parts

Of all our vices have created arts;

Then see how little the remaining sum

Which serv’d the past, and must the times to come.

Trade it may help, society extend,

But lures the pirate, and corrupts the friend:

It raises armies in a nation’s aid,

But bribes a senate, and the land’s betray’d.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,

As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.

True, conscious honor is to feel no sin:

He’s arm’d without that’s innocent within.

Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,

Make use of ev’ry friend—and ev’ry foe.

Tumultuous waves embroil’d the bellowing flood,

All trembling, deafen’d, and aghast we stood!

No more the vessel plough’d the dreadful wave,

Fear seized the mighty, and unnerved the brave.

Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,

One clear, unchanged, and universal light,

Life, force, and beauty must to all impart,

At once the source, and end, and test of art.

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Virtue may choose the high or low degree,

’Tis just alike to Virtue and to me;

Dwell in a monk, or light upon a king,

She’s still the same belov’d contented thing.

Virtue she finds too painful an endeavor,

Content to dwell in decencies forever.

Virtuous and vicious every man must be,

Few in th’ extreme, but all in the degree.

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees.

We conquered France, but felt our captive’s charms,

Her art victorious triumph’d o’er our arms.

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;

Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.

Wealth in the gross is death, but life diffus’d;

As poison heals, in just proportion us’d;

In heaps, like ambergrise, a stink it lies,

But well dispers’d, is incense to the skies.

What Conscience dictates to be done,

Or warns me not to do;

This teach me more than Hell to shun,

That more than Heav’n pursue.

What dire offence from amorous causes springs;

What mighty contests rise from trivial things!

What is it to be wise?

’Tis but to know how little can be known,

To see all others’ faults, and feel our own.

What nature wants, commodious gold bestows;

’Tis thus we cut the bread another sows.

What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,

The soul’s calm sunshine, and the heart-felt joy,

Is virtue’s prize.

What so pure, which envious tongues will spare?

Some wicked wits have libell’d all the fair,

With matchless impudence they style a wife,

The dear-bought curse, and lawful plague of life;

A bosom serpent, a domestic evil,

A night invasion, and a mid-day devil;

Let not the wise these sland’rous words regard,

But curse the bones of ev’ry living bard.

What though no friends in sable weeds appear,

Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year?

And bear about the mockery of woe

To midnight dances, and the public show!

When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day,

Fancy restores what vengeance snatch’d away.

When to mischief mortals bend their will,

How soon they find fit instruments of ill!

When weary reapers quit the sultry field,

And, crown’d with corn, their thanks to Ceres yield.

Where grows?—where grows it not? If vain our toil,

We ought to blame the culture, not the soil.

Whether with reason or with instinct blest,

Know, all enjoy that power which suits them best;

To bliss alike by that direction tend,

And find the means proportion’d to their end.

“With every pleasing, every prudent part,

Say, What can Chloe want?”—she wants a heart.

She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought;

But never, never reach’d one generous thought.

Who builds a church to God, and not to fame,

Will never mark the marble with his name.

Who combats bravely is not therefore brave:

He dreads a death-bed like the meanest slave.

Who finds not Providence all good and wise,

Alike in what it gives, and what denies.

Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms,

Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms,

Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar’s mind.

Who reasons wisely, is not therefore wise,

His pride in reasoning, not in acting lies.

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree,

And sound casuists doubt like you and me?

Who taught the nations of the field and wood

To shun their poison and to choose their food.

Who thinks that Fortune cannot change her mind,

Prepares a dreadful jest for all mankind.

Who would not praise Patricio’s high desert,

His hand unstain’d, his uncorrupted heart,

His comprehensive head? all interests weigh’d,

All Europe sav’d, yet Britain not betray’d.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,

Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.

Why will you break the Sabbath of my days?

Now sick alike of envy and of praise.

Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,

Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;

Alike reserv’d to blame, or to commend,

A tim’rous foe, and a suspicious friend.

Words are like leaves, and where they most abound,

Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.

Ye flowers that droop forsaken by the spring;

Ye birds that left by summer cease to sing;

Yet trees that fade when autumn heats remove,

Say, is not absence death to those who love?

Ye sacred Nine! that all my soul possess …

Bear me, O bear me to sequestered scenes,

The bow’ry mazes, and surrounding greens.

Years following years, steal something every day;

At last they steal us from ourselves away.

Yet shall thy grave with rising flow’rs be dressed,

And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast;

There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,

There the first roses of the year shall blow.

You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come,

Knock as you please, there’s nobody at home.

A brave man thinks no one his superior who does him an injury; for he has it then in his power to make himself superior to the other by forgiving it.

A field of glory is a field for all.

A fool to pleasure, yet a slave to fame.

A king may be a tool, a thing of straw; but if he serves to frighten our enemies, and secure our property, it is well enough; a scarecrow is a thing of straw, but it protects the corn.

A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday.

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of the bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.

A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn.

A sweet forgetfulness of human care.

A tree is a nobler object than a prince in his coronation robes.

A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.

A youth of frolic, an old age of cards.

Act well your part; there all the honor lies.

Age and want sit smiling at the gate.

All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.

All nature mourns, the skies relent in showers; hushed are the birds, and closed the drooping flowers.

All other goods by fortune’s hand are given; a wife is the peculiar gift of heaven.

All seems infected that the infected spy, and all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.

All-potent flattery, universal lord!

An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie; for an excuse is a lie guarded.

An honest man’s the noblest work of God.

An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him.

And empty heads console with empty sound.

And gentle Dullness ever loves a joke.

And mistress of herself though china fall.

And reason raise o’er instinct as you can, in this ’tis God directs, in that ’tis man.

And sip with nymphs their elemental tea.

And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.

And the touch’d needle trembles to the pole.

And truths divine came mended from that tongue.

Art still followed where Rome’s eagles flew.

As yet a child, not yet a fool to fame, I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.

Astrologers that future fates foreshow.

At every word a reputation dies.

At present we can only reason of the divine justice from what we know of justice in man. When we are in other scenes, we may have truer and nobler ideas of it; but while we are in this life, we can only speak from the volume that is laid open before us.

Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old.

Beauty draws us with a single hair.

Beauty, frail flower that every season fears, blooms in thy colors for a thousand years.

Behold the groves that shine with silver frost, their beauty withered, and their verdure lost!

Bliss is the same, in subject or in king.

Calm, thinking villains, whom no faith could fix.

Can pocket states, or fetch or carry kings.

Caracci’s strength, Correggio’s softer line, Paulo’s free course, and Titian’s warmth divine.

Cavil you may, but never criticise.

Charms by accepting, by submitting sways, yet has her humor most when she obeys.

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty; it is not only needless, but impairs what it would improve.

Devotion’s self shall steal a thought from heaven.

Die of a rose in aromatic pain.

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

Envy, to which the ignoble mind’s a slave, is emulation in the learned or brave.

Evasive of the bridal day, she gives fond hopes to all, and all with hope deceives.

Every man has just as much vanity as he wants understanding.

Every woman is at heart a rake.

Extremes in nature equal ends produce.

Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare.

Fame can never make us lie down contentedly on a death-bed.

Fickle Fortune reigns, and, undiscerning, scatters crowns and chains.

Fine by defect, and delicately weak.

Fine sense and exalted sense are not half as useful as common sense. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense. And he that will carry nothing about him but gold will be every day at a loss for readier change.

Fools admire, but men of sense approve.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight; his can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.

For never, never wicked man was wise.

From the moment one sets up for an author, one must be treated as ceremoniously, that is as unfaithfully, “as a king’s favorite or a king.”

Genius involves both envy and calumny.

Get your enemies to read your works in order to mend them, for your friend is so much your second self that he will judge too like you.

Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense weigh thy opinion against Providence.

Grant me honest fame or grant me none.

Grove nods at grove.

Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength.

Half our knowledge we must snatch, not take.

He best shall paint them who shall feel them most.

He mounts the storm and walks upon the wind.

He who tells a lie is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.

He’s armed without that’s innocent within.

Health consists with temperance alone.

Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate.

Hew the block off, and get out the man.

Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

His praise is lost who waits till all commend.

Hoary whiskers and a forky beard.

Homer excels all the inventors of other arts in this: that he has swallowed up the honor of those who succeeded him.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast.

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

How the wit brightens! how the style refines!

I am satisfied to trifle away my time, rather than let it stick by me.

I begin where most people end, with a full conviction of the emptiness of all sorts of ambition, and the unsatisfactory nature of all human pleasures.

I have more zeal than wit.

I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another’s misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.

I’ll print it, and shame the fools.

Immodest words admit of no defence.

In every ear it spread, on every tongue it grew.

In this commonplace world every one is said to be romantic who either admires a fine thing or does one.

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold, alike fantastic if too new or old.

It is not so correct to say that he speaks from nature as that she speaks through him.

It is sure the hardest science to forget!

It is vanity which makes the rake at twenty, the worldly man at forty, and the retired man at sixty. We are not to think that best in general for which we find ourselves best fitted in particular.

It is very natural for a young friend and a young lover to think the persons they love have nothing to do but to please them.

It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow-necked bottles—the less they have in them the more noise they make in pouring it out.

Jarring interests of themselves create the according music of a well-mixed state.

Judges and senates have been bought for gold.

Just as the twig is bent the tree is inclined.

Just disease to luxury succeeds.

Ladies like variegated tulips show.

Ladies, like variegated tulips, show ’tis to their changes half their charms we owe.

Learn from the beasts the physic of the field.

Let Fortune do her worst, whatever she makes us lose, as long as she never makes us lose our honesty and our independence.

Let those teach others who themselves excel; and censure freely, who have written well.

Looks through nature up to nature’s God.

Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies.

Love the offender, yet detest the offence.

Lull’d by soft zephyrs thro’ the broken pane.

Man, like the generous vine, supported lives; the strength he gains is from the embrace he gives.

Mankind is unamendable.

Men dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake!

Men must be taught as though you taught them not.

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

Monuments, like men, submit to fate.

My languid numbers have forgot to flow, and fancy sinks beneath a weight of woe.

Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said, Let Newton be; and all was light.

No creature smarts so little as a fool.

Not a vanity is given in vain.

Not poetry, but prose run mad.

Nothing is more certain than that much of the force, as well as grace, of arguments or instructions depends on their conciseness.

O name forever sad, forever dear!

Of darkness visible so much be lent, as half to show, half veil, the deep intent.

Oft in dreams invention we bestow to change a flounce or add a furbelow.

One science only will one genius fit, so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

One self-approving hour whole years outweighs of stupid starers and of loud huzzas.

Order is heaven’s first law.

Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.

Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few.

Peaceful sleep out the Sabbath of the tomb.

Poplars and alders ever quivering played, and nodding cypress formed a fragrant shade.

Pour the full tide of eloquence along, serenely pure, and yet divinely strong.

Praise undeserved is scandal in disguise.

Pretty conceptions, fine metaphors, glittering expressions, and something of a neat cast of verse are properly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments of poetry.

Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, and fills up all the mighty void of sense.

Ravished with the whistling of a name.

Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, lie in three words—health, peace, and competence.

Rogues in rags are kept in countenance by rogues in ruffles.

Scipio, great in his triumphs, in retirement great.

Self-love and reason to one end aspire.

She comes unlooked for if she comes at all.

She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen.

Sickness is a sort of early old age; it teaches us a diffidence in our earthly state.

Silence that spoke, and eloquence of eyes.

Silence! coeval with eternity! thou wert ere Nature’s self began to be; thine was the sway ere heaven was formed on earth, ere fruitful thought conceived creation’s birth.

Sleepless themselves to give their readers sleep.

So obliging that he ne’er oblig’d.

So vast is art; so narrow human wit.

Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows.

Soft without weakness; without glaring, gay.

Solid pudding against empty praise.

Some old men, by continually praising the time of their youth, would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples.

Some people are commended for a giddy kind of good-humor, which is as much a virtue as drunkenness.

Some to church repair, not for the doctrine, but the music there.

Sometimes virtue starves while vice is fed.

Still when the lust of tyrant power succeeds, some Athens perishes, or some Tully bleeds.

Such as are still observing upon others are like those who are always abroad at other men’s houses, reforming everything there while their own runs to ruin.

Such labored nothings, in so strange a style, amaze the unlearned and make the learned smile.

Sure never to o’ershoot, but just to hit.

Talk what you will of taste, my friend, you’ll find two of a face as soon as of a mind.

Tell me, my soul! can this be death?

Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss.

Th’ unwilling gratitude of base mankind!

That each from other differs, first confess; next that he varies from himself no less.

The cabinets of the sick and the closets of the dead have been ransacked to publish private letters and divulge to all mankind the most secret sentiments of friendship.

The character of covetousness is what a man generally acquires more through some niggardliness or ill grace in little and inconsiderable things, than in expenses of any consequence.

The devil was piqued such saintship to behold, and longed to tempt him.

The dull flat falsehood serves for policy, and in the cunning, truth’s itself a lie.

The feast of reason and the flow of soul.

The flowers are gone when the fruits appear to ripen.

The gracious dew of pulpit eloquence.

The grave where even the great find rest.

The greatest can but blaze and pass away.

The laughers are a majority.

The learn’d reflect on what before they knew.

The life of a wit is a warfare upon earth.

The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife gives all the strength and color of our life.

The lot of man, to suffer and to die.

The many-headed monster of the pit.

The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease.

The most positive men are the most credulous, since they most believe themselves, and advise most with their falsest flatterer and worst enemy—their own self-love.

The nations bleed where’er her steps she turns; the groan still deepens, and the combat burns.

The never-failing vice of fools.

The proper study of mankind is man.

The pure and noble, the graceful and dignified, simplicity of language is nowhere in such perfection as in the Scriptures and Homer. The whole book of Job, with regard both to sublimity of thought and morality, exceeds, beyond all comparison, the most noble parts of Homer.

The race by vigor, not by vaunts, is won.

The right divine of kings to govern wrong!

The ruling passion conquers reason still.

The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years.

The search of our future being is but a needless, anxious, and uncertain haste to be knowing, sooner than we can, what, without all this solicitude, we shall know a little later.

The skies yet blushing with departed light.

The soul’s calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy, is virtue’s prize.

The vanity of human life is like a river, constantly passing away, and yet constantly coming on.

The villain’s censure is extorted praise.

The whispering breeze pants on the leaves, and dies upon the trees.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.

Then marble, soften’d into life, grew warm.

Then sculpture and her sister arts revived; stones leaped to form, and rocks began to live.

There is a majesty in simplicity which is far above the quantities of wit.

There is but one way I know of conversing safely with all men; that is, not by concealing what we say or do, but by saying or doing nothing that deserves to be concealed.

There is no study that is not capable of delighting us after a little application to it.

There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friendship; and, indeed, friendship itself is only a part of virtue.

There is nothing wanting to make all rational and disinterested people in the world of one religion, but that they should talk together every day.

There never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal whatsoever, in which the most ignorant were not the most violent; for a bee is not a busier animal than a blockhead.

There should be, methinks, as little merit in loving a woman for her beauty as in loving a man for his prosperity; both being equally subject to change.

There, interspersed in lawns and opening glades, thin trees arise, that shun each other’s shade.

They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.

Thou Great First Cause, least understood.

Though triumphs were to generals only due, crowns were reserved to grace the soldiers too.

Time conquers all, and we must Time obey.

Tired he sleeps, and life’s poor play is o’er.

’T is expectation makes a blessing dear.

’Tis not a lip or eye we beauty call, but the joint force and full result of all.

To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.

To buy books only because they were published by an eminent printer, is much as if a man should buy clothes that did not fit him, only because made by some famous tailor.

To dazzle let the vain design; to raise the thought, and touch the heart, be thine.

To endeavor to work upon the vulgar with fine sense is like attempting to hew blocks with a razor.

To err is human; to forgive, divine!

To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we cannot suffer in others is neither better nor worse than to be more willing to be fools ourselves than to have others so.

To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite, who never mentions hell to ears polite.

To swear is neither brave, polite, nor wise.

To the Elysian shades dismiss my soul, where no carnation fades.

Trifles themselves are elegant in him.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance.

True self-love and social are the same.

Truth needs no flowers of speech.

Truth shines the brighter, clad in verse.

Unthought-of frailties cheat us in the wise.

Vast chain of being, which from God began, Nature’s ethereal, human, angel, man.

Vital spark of heav’nly flame!

We ought, in humanity, no more to despise a man for the misfortunes of the mind than for those of the body, when they are such as he cannot help; were this thoroughly considered we should mo more laugh at a man for having his brains cracked than for having his head broke.

What is every year of a wise man’s life but a censure or critic on the past?

What is fame? a fancied life in others’ breath.

What mighty contests rise from trivial things!

What thin partitions sense from thought divide!

What Tully said of war may be applied to disputing: “It should be always so managed as to remember that the only true end of it is peace.” But generally true disputants are like true sportsmen,—their whole delight is in the pursuit; and the disputant no more cares for the truth than the sportsman for the hare.

When I die, I should be ashamed to leave enough to build me a monument if there were a wanting friend above ground. I would enjoy the pleasure of what I give by giving it alive and seeing another enjoy it.

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil’s leavings.

When rosy morning glimmered o’er the dales.

When two people compliment each other with the choice of anything, each of them generally gets that which he likes least.

Where blended lie the oppressor and the oppressed.

Where order in variety we see, and where, though all things differ, all agree.

Wherever I find a great deal of gratitude in a poor man I take it for granted there would be as much generosity if he were a rich man.

While I live, no rich or noble knave shall walk the world in credit to his grave.

Who dare to love their country and be poor.

Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise?

Whoever thinks a perfect work to see, thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.

Wholesome solitude, the nurse of sense!

Wit and judgment often are at strife.

With loads of learned lumber in his head.

With that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.

Woman is at best a contradiction still.

Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow.

Ye little stars, hide your diminish’d rays.

Yet eat in dreams, the custard of the day.

Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed; health to himself, and to his infants bread, the laborer bears.

Zeal, then, not charity, became the guide.

Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD