Mere poets are sottish as mere drunkards are, who live in a continual mist, without seeing or judging anything clearly. A man should be learned in several sciences, and should have a reasonable, philosophical and in some measure a mathematical head, to be a complete and excellent poet.
Sweet is pleasure after pain.
The love of liberty with life is given, And life itself the inferior gift of Heaven.
Errors like straws upon the surface flow, Who would search for pearls to be grateful for often must dive below.
I never saw any good that came of telling truth.
But love’s a malady without a cure.
New vows to plight, and plighted vows to break.
Fortune’s unjust; she ruins oft the brave, and him who should be victor, makes the slave.
A happy genius is the gift of nature.
Every age has a kind of universal genius, which inclines those that live in it to some particular studies.
Long pains, with use of bearing, are half eased.
Many things impossible to thought have been by need to full perfection brought.
Few know the use of life before ’tis past.
An ugly woman in a rich habit set out with jewels nothing can become.
No king nor nation one moment can retard the appointed hour.
A lazy frost, a numbness of the mind.
How easy ’tis, when Destiny proves kind, With full-spread sails to run before the wind!
The thought of being nothing after death is a burden insupportable to a virtuous man.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.
Desire of greatness is a godlike sin.