Learn that the present hour alone is man’s.
Reflect that life, like every other blessing, Derives its value from its use alone.
The drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give. For we that live to please must please to live.
In life’s last scene what prodigies surprise, Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise! From Marlborough’s eyes the streams of dotage flow, And Swift expires a driveller and a show.
Catch, then, oh! catch the transient hour, Improve each moment as it flies; Life’s a short summer-man a flower; He dies-alas! how soon he dies!
Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.
To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.
For patience, sov’reign o’er transmuted ill.
In all evils which admits a remedy, impatience should be avoided, because it wastes the time and attention in complaints which, if properly applied, might remove the cause.
Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.
The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights.
I have all my life long been lying in bed till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good.
He that teaches us anything which we knew not before is undoubtedly to be reverenced as a master.
Evil is uncertain in the same degree as good, and for the reason that we ought not to hope too securely, we ought not to fear with to much dejection.
Almost all the moral good which is left among us is the apparent effect of physical evil.
Greece appears to be the fountain of knowledge; Rome of elegance.
The size of a man’s understanding can be justly measured by his mirth.
He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.
He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dulness in others.
Why, sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, Sir, is not in Nature.