To buy books as some do who make no use of them, 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 they were made by some famous tailor.
Fine sense and exalted sense are not half so 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 want of readier change.
Fame can never make us lie down contentedly on a deathbed.
Heav’n from all creatures hides the book of fate, All but the page prescribed, their present state: From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: Or who could suffer being here below?
The man that loves and laughs must sure do well.
The best way to prove the clearness of our mind, is by showing its faults; as when a stream discovers the dirt at the bottom, it convinces us of the transparency and purity of the water.
Mark what unvary’d laws preserve each state, Laws wise as Nature, and as fixed as Fate.
How Instinct varies in the grov’ling swine.
What is it to be wise? ‘Tis but to know how little can be known, To see all others’ faults, and feel our own.
Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense weigh thy opinion against Providence.
Behold the groves that shine with silver frost, their beauty withered, and their verdure lost!
Intestine war no more our passions wage, And giddy factions bear away their rage.
O let us still the secret joy partake, To follow virtue even for virtue’s sake.
Court-virtues bear, like gems, the highest rate, Born where Heav’n influence scarce can penetrate. In life’s low vale, the soil the virtues like, They please as beauties, here as wonders strike.
But to the world no bugbear is so great, As want of figure and a small estate.
Leave not a foot of verse, a foot of stone, A Page, a Grave, that they can call their own; But spread, my sons, your glory thin or thick, On passive paper, or on solid brick.
When to mischief mortals bend their will, how soon they find it instruments of ill.
He knows to live who keeps the middle state, and neither leans on this side nor on that.
In a sadly pleasing strain, let the warbling lute complain.
As some to Church repair, not for the doctrine, but the music there.