Pygmies are pygmies still, though percht on Alps; And pyramids are pyramids in vales. Each man makes his own stature, builds himself. Virtue alone outbuilds the Pyramids; Her monuments shall last when Egypt’s fall.
Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, In rayless majesty, now stretches forth Her leaden sceptre o’er a slumbering world.
There buds the promise of celestial worth.
Man makes a death which Nature never made. And feels a thousand deaths in fearing one.
Affliction is the good man’s shining scene; prosperity conceals his brightest ray; as night to stars, woe lustre gives to man.
Horace appears in good humor while he censures, and therefore his censure has the more weight, as supposed to proceed from judgment and not from passion.
What tender force, what dignity divine, what virtue consecrating every feature; around that neck what dross are gold and pearl!
A dedication is a wooden leg.
With fame, in just proportion, envy grows.
The spirit walks of every day deceased.
Poor in abundance, famish’d at a feast.
Fame is the shade of immortality, And in itself a shadow. Soon as caught, Contemn’d; it shrinks to nothing in the grasp.
Nothing in Nature, much less conscious being, Was e’er created solely for itself.
Joys season’d high, and tasting strong of guilt.
Tis immortality, ’tis that alone, Amid life’s pains, abasements, emptiness, The soul can comfort, elevate, and fill. That only, and that amply this performs.
Of boasting more than of a bomb afraid, A soldier should be modest as a maid.
Men should press forward, in fame’s glorious chase; Nobles look backward, and so lose the race.
The man who builds, and wants wherewith to pay, Provides a home from which to run away.
Who, for the poor renown of being smart, Would leave a sting within a brother’s heart?
O! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought, Lost to the noble sallies of the soul! Who think it solitude to be alone.