Most satirists are indeed a public scourge; Their mildest physic is a farrier’s purge; Their acrid temper turns, as soon as stirr’d, The milk of their good purpose all to curd. Their zeal begotten, as their works rehearse, By lean despair upon an empty purse.
All zeal for a reform, that gives offence To peace and charity, is mere pretence.
The mind, relaxing into needful sport, Should turn to writers of an abler sort, Whose wit well managed, and whose classic style, Give truth a lustre, and make wisdom smile.
Sin let loose speaks punishment at hand.
God made bees, and bees made honey, God made man, and man made money, Pride made the devil, and the devil made sin; So God made a cole-pit to put the devil in.
Greece, sound, thy Homer’s, Rome thy Virgil’s name, But England’s Milton equals both in fame.
It chills my blood to hear the blest Supreme Rudely appealed to on each trifling theme.
Remorse, the fatal egg that pleasure laid.
The earth was made so various, that the mind Of desultory man, studious of change, And pleased with novelty, might be indulged.
Religion Caesar never knew Thy posterity shall sway, Where his eagles never flew, None as invincible as they.
I venerate the man whose heart is warm, Whose hands are pure, whose doctrine and whose life, Coincident, exhibit lucid proof That he is honest in the sacred cause.
He that negotiates between God and man, As God’s ambassador, the grand concerns Of judgment and of mercy, should beware Of lightness in his speech.
The things that mount the rostrum with a skip, And then skip down again, pronounce a text, Cry hem; and reading what they never wrote Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work, And with a well-bred whisper close the scene!
There goes the parson, oh illustrious spark! And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk.
Transforms old print To zigzag manuscript, and cheats the eyes Of gallery critics by a thousand arts.
When I thinkof my own native land, In a moment I seem to be there; But alas! recollection at hand Soon hurries me back to despair.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free; They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
Truth is the golden girdle of the globe.
A moral, sensible, and well-bred manWill not affront me, and no other can.
There is mercy in every place. And mercy, encouraging thought gives even affliction a grace and reconciles man to his lot.