A good-natured man has the whole world to be happy out of.
The good must merit God’s peculiar care; But who but God can tell us who they are?
All other goods by Fortune’s hands are given; A wife is the peculiar gift of heaven.
Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise. By mountains pil’d on mountains to the skies? Heav’n still with laughter the vain toil surveys, And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
Who know but He, whose hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms, Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar’s mind.
What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards? Alas! not all the blood, of all the Howards.
Hear how the birds, on ev’ry blooming spray, With joyous musick wake the dawning day.
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
The blest to-day is as completely so, As who began a thousand years ago.
And more than echoes talk along the walls.
Whether with Reason, or with Instinct blest, Know, all enjoy that pow’r which suits them best.
Where grows? – where grows it not? If vain our toil, We ought to blame the culture, not the soil.
Be niggards of advice on no pretense; For the worst avarice is that of sense.
There still remains to mortify a wit The many-headed monster of the pit.
Fear not the anger of the wise to raise; Those best can bear reproof who merit praise.
Simplicity is the mean between ostentation and rusticity.
Love the offender, yet detest the offense.
Who are next to knaves? Those that converse with them.
The world is a thing we must of necessity either laugh at or be angry at; if we laugh at it, they say we are proud; if we are angry at it, they say we are ill-natured.
The greatest advantage I know of being thought a wit by the world is, that it gives one the greater freedom of playing the fool.