The volumes of antiquity, like medals, may very well serve to amuse the curious, but the works of the moderns, like the current coin of a kingdom, are much better for immediate use.
A kind and gentle heart he had, To comfort friends and foes; The naked every day he clad When he put on his clothes.
Our chief comforts often produce our greatest anxieties, and the increase in our possessions is but an inlet to new disquietudes.
So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind’s roar, But bind him to his native mountains more.
He cast off his friends as a huntsman his pack, For he knew when he pleas’d he could whistle them back.
Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, Or by the lazy Scheld or wandering Po.
A night-cap deck’d his brows instead of bay,- A cap by night, a stocking all the day.
A mind too vigorous and active, serves only to consume the body to which it is joined.
Whatever the skill of any country may be in the sciences, it is from its excellence in polite learning alone that it must expect a character from posterity.
The greatest object in the universe, says a certain philosopher, is a good man struggling with adversity; yet there is still a greater, which is the good man who comes to relieve it.
In arguing too, the parson own’d his skill, For e’en though vanquish’d he could argue still; While words of learned length and thundering sound Amaz’d the gazing rustics rang’d around; And still they gaz’d, and still the wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew.
And learn the luxury of doing good.
The watch-dog’s voice that bay’d the whispering wind, And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind.
Here lies David Garrick, describe me who can, An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man.
Embosom’d in the deep where Holland lies. Methinks her patient sons before me stand, Where the broad ocean leans against the land.
The genteel thing is the genteel thing any time, if as be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.
Absence, like death, sets a seal on the image of those we love: we cannot realize the intervening changes which time may have effected.
Who mix’d reason with pleasure, and wisdom with mirth: If he had any faults, he has left us in doubt.
Such dainties to them, their health it might hurt; It ’s like sending them ruffles when wanting a shirt.
The whitewash’d wall, the nicely sanded floor, The varnish’d clock that click’d behind the door; The chest, contriv’d a double debt to pay,- A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.
Good people all, with one accord, Lament for Madam Blaize, Who never wanted a good word From those who spoke her praise.