They best can judge a poet’s worth, Who oft themselves have known The pangs of a poetic birth By labours of their own.
Pleasure is labour too, and tires as much.
How much a dunce that has been sent to roam, excels a dunce that has been kept at home.
God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.
But still remember, if you mean to please, To press your point with modesty and ease.
Pleasure admitted in undue degree, enslaves the will, nor leaves the judgment free.
Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream.
Heaven’s harmony is universal love.
We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works die too.
Some to the fascination of a name, Surrender judgment hoodwinked.
Blest be the art that can immortalize, – the art that baffles time’s tyrannic claim to quench it.
Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
Trials make the promise sweet, Trials give new life to prayer; Trials bring me to His feet, Lay me low, and keep me there.
They whom truth and wisdom lead, can gather honey from a weed.
He that has seen both sides of fifty has lived to little purpose if he has no other views of the world than he had when he was much younger.
A story, in which native humour reigns, Is often useful, always entertains; A graver fact, enlisted on your side, May furnish illustration, well applied; But sedentary weavers of long tales Give me the fidgets, and my patience fails.
Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations, who had else Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
How readily we wish time spent revoked, that we might try the ground again where once – through inexperience, as we now perceive – we missed that happiness we might have found!
Spring hangs her infant blossoms on the trees, Rock’d in the cradle of the western breeze.
Far happier are the dead methinks than they who look for death and fear it every day.