The laughers are a majority.
Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.
The nicest constitutions of government are often like the finest pieces of clock-work, which, depending on so many motions, are therefore more subject to be out of order.
How index-learning turns no student pale, Yet holds the eel of science by the tail!
When to the Permanent is sacrificed the Mutable, the prize is thine: the drop returneth whence it came. The Open Path leads to the changeless change – Non-Being, the glorious state of Absoluteness, the Bliss past human thought.
I begin where most people end, with a full conviction of the emptiness of all sorts of ambition, and the unsatisfactory nature of all human pleasures.
Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes; And when in act they cease, in prospect rise.
Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend, With whom my muse began, with who shall end.
The most positive men are the most credulous, since they most believe themselves, and advise most with their falsest flatterer and worst enemy – their own self-love.
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, and fills up all the mighty void of sense.
To swear is neither brave, polite, nor wise.
All nature mourns, the skies relent in showers; hushed are the birds, and closed the drooping flowers.
There is nothing wanting to make all rational and disinterested people in the world of one religion, but that they should talk together every day.
So upright Quakers please both man and God.
But touch me, and no minister so sore. Whoe’er offends, at some unlucky time Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme, Sacred to ridicule his whole life long, And the sad burthen of some merry song.
For what I have publish’d, I can only hope to be pardon’d; but for what I have burned, I deserve to be prais’d.
You beat your Pate, and fancy Wit will come: Knock as you please, there’s no body at home.
To Him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, He bounds, connects and equals all!
Where beams of imagination play, the memory’s soft figures melt away...
Search then the ruling passion: This clue, once found, unravels all the rest.