Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.
All nature is but art unknown to thee.
Wine lets no lover unrewarded go.
Nothing can be more shocking and horrid than one of our kitchens sprinkled with blood, and abounding with the cries of expiring victims or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung up here and there.
Act well your part, there all the honour lies.
Beauty draws us with a single hair.
The vanity of human life is like a river, constantly passing away, and yet constantly coming on.
A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always To be Blest.
Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.
The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read With loads of learned lumber in his head.
No louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast, When husbands or lap-dogs breathe their last.
But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man.
Men, some to business, some to pleasure take; But every woman is at heart a rake.
Blest paper-credit! last and best supply! That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!
Fly, dotard, fly! With thy wise dreams and fables of the sky.
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 Seene, and be what they behold: For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage.
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly! O grave! where is thy victory? O death! where is thy sting?
Oh! be thou blest with all that Heaven can send, Long health, long youth, long pleasure-and a friend.