Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, Lie in three words,-health, peace, and competence.
And make each day a critic on the last.
There is nothing meritorious but virtue and friendship.
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.
A field of glory is a field for all.
Why did I write? What sin to me unknown dipped me in ink, my parents, or my own?
A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn.
Oft in dreams invention we bestow to change a flounce or add a furbelow.
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.
This long disease, my life.
Music resembles poetry, in each Are nameless graces which no methods teach, And which a master hand alone can reach.
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart.
Wit and judgment often are at strife.
Man, like the generous vine, supported lives; the strength he gains is from the embrace he gives.
Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to Love?
Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies, And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.
Curse on all laws but those which love has made.
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.
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.
Like following life through creatures you dissect, You lose it in the moment you detect.