But love, like wine, gives a tumultuous bliss, Heighten’d indeed beyond all mortal pleasures; But mingles pangs and madness in the bowl.
Who gives an empire, by the gift defeats All end of giving; and procures contempt Instead of gratitude.
This is the bud of being, the dim dawn, The twilight of our day, the vestibule; Life’s theatre as yet is shut, and death, Strong death, alone can heave the massy bar, This gross impediment of clay remove, And make us embryos of existence free.
Who can take Death’s portrait? The tyrant never sat.
Old men love novelties; the last arriv’d Still pleases best; the youngest steals their smiles.
Men are but men; we did not make ourselves.
Day buries day; month, month; and year the year: Our life is but a chain of many deaths.
Live now; be damn’d hereafter.
A prince indebted is a fortune made.
Who combats with a brother, wounds himself.
Polite diseases make some idiots vain, Which, if unfortunately well, they feign.
Ah! what is human life? How, like the dial’s tardy-moving shade, Day after day slides from us unperceiv’d! The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth; Too subtle is the movement to be seen; Yet soon the hour is up – and we are gone.
Where boasting ends, there dignity begins.
A death-bed’s a detector of the heart.
How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, how complicate, how wonderful is man! Distinguished link in being’s endless chain! Midway from nothing to the Deity! Dim miniature of greatness absolute! An heir of glory! A frail child of dust! Helpless immortal! Insect infinite! A worm! A God!
Be wise today; ’tis madness to defer. Next day the fatal precedent will plead; thus on, til wisdom is pushed our of life.
Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fools reform and mortal men lay hold on heaven.
Virtue alone has majesty in death.
All men think that all men are mortal but themselves.
Men before you have quit smoking – you can too!