Tis all in vain to keep a constant pother About one vice and fall into another.
A fly, a grape-stone, or a hair can kill.
A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind.
Old politicians chew on wisdom past, And totter on in business to the last.
Jarring interests of themselves create the according music of a well-mixed state.
Pretty conceptions, fine metaphors, glittering expressions, and something of a neat cast of verse are properly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments of poetry.
True self-love and social are the same.
Sometimes virtue starves while vice is fed.
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.
The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife gives all the strength and color of our life.
That each from other differs, first confess; next that he varies from himself no less.
Still when the lust of tyrant power succeeds, some Athens perishes, or some Tully bleeds.
I am satisfied to trifle away my time, rather than let it stick by me.
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.
A tree is a nobler object than a prince in his coronation-robes.
Good-humor only teaches charms to last, Still makes new conquests and maintains the past.
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.
Some place the bliss in action, some in ease, Those call it pleasure, and contentment these.
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.
Every woman is at heart a rake.