Fondly we think we honor merit then, when we but praise ourselves in other men.
Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate.
Art still followed where Rome’s eagles flew.
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 dull flat falsehood serves for policy, and in the cunning, truth’s itself a lie.
The enormous faith of many made for one.
The search of our future being is but a needless, anxious, and haste to be knowing, sooner than we can, what, without all this solicitude, we shall know a little later.
Devotion’s self shall steal a thought from heaven.
One self-approving hour whole years outweighs.
The flower’s are gone when the Fruits appear to ripen.
Some people are commended for a giddy kind of good-humor, which is as much a virtue as drunkenness.
It is sure the hardest science to forget!
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.
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 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.
Genius involves both envy and calumny.
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?
Whether the darken’d room to muse invite, Or whiten’d wall provoke the skew’r to write; In durance, exile, Bedlam, or the Mint, Like Lee or Budgel I will rhyme and print.
Pretty! in amber to observe the forms Of hairs, of straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms! The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, But wonder how the devil they got there.
Poets heap virtues, painters gems, at will, And show their zeal, and hide their want of skill.