A perfect woman’s but a softer man.
Dear, damned, distracting town, farewell! Thy fools no more I’ll tease: This year in peace, ye critics, dwell, Ye harlots, sleep at ease!
An atheist is but a mad, ridiculous derider of piety, but a hypocrite makes a sober jest of God and religion; he finds it easier to be upon his knees than to rise to a good action.
Tis use alone that sanctifies expense And splendor borrow all her rays from sense.
Silence! coeval with eternity! thou wert ere Nature’s self began to be; thine was the sway ere heaven was formed on earth, ere fruitful thought conceived creation’s birth.
Truth needs not flowers of speech.
There is a majesty in simplicity.
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield; Learn from the beasts the physic of the field; The arts of building from the bee receive; Learn of the mole to plow, the worm to weave.
Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast; But shall the dignity of vice be lost?
Vices and virtues are of a strange nature, for the more we have, the fewer we think we have.
Calm, thinking villains, whom no faith could fix, Of crooked counsels and dark politics.
Heaven forming each on other to depend, A master, or a servant, or a friend, Bids each on other for assistance call, Till one man’s weakness grows the strength of all.
Learn of the little nautilus to sail, Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
Alas! the small discredit of a bribe Scarce hurts the lawyer, but undoes the scribe.
The doubtful beam long nods from side to side.
Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise.
And bear about the mockery of woe To midnight dances and the public show.
Eve left Adam, to meet the Devil in private.
So modern ’pothecaries, taught the art By doctor’s bills to play the doctor’s part, Bold in the practice of mistaken rules, Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.