Some wits, too, like oracles, deal in ambiguities, but not with equal success; for though ambiguities are the first excellence of an imposter, they are the last of a wit.
He that’s ungrateful has no guilt but one; All other crimes may pass for virtues in him.
Body and soul, like peevish man and wife, United jar, and yet are loth to part.
Oh, how portentous is prosperity! How comet-like, it threatens while it shines.
We cry for mercy to the next amusement, The next amusement mortgages our fields.
Man wants but little, nor that little long; How soon must he resign his very dust, Which frugal nature lent him for an hour!
Britannia’s shame! There took her gloomy flight, On wing impetuous, a black sullen soul. Less base the fear of death than fear of life. O Britain! infamous for suicide.
What most we wish, with ease we fancy near.
Satire recoils whenever charged too high; round your own fame the fatal splinters fly.
When pain can’t bless, heaven quits us in despair.
Ocean into tempest wrought, To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.
In chambers deep, Where waters sleep, What unknown treasures pave the floor.
Groan under gold, yet weep for want of bread.
Nothing but what astonishes is true.
Our land is the dearer of our sacrifices. The blood of our martyrs sanctifies and enriches it. Their spirit passes into thousands of hearts. How costly is the progress of the race. It is only by the giving of life that we can have life.
Of all the documents that have come down from antiquity, Genesis three is the only one that explains how the world became sinful and evil.
Independence existed for individual before liberty was established for all.
I had looked for happiness in fast living, but it was not there. I tried to find it in money, but it was not there either.
Procrastination is the thief of time.
But if an Original, by being as excellent, as new, adds admiration to surprize, then we are at the writer’s mercy; on the strong wing of his imagination, we are snatched from Britain to Italy, from climate to climate, from pleasure to pleasure; we have no home, no thought, of our own; till the magician drops his pen: And then falling down into ourselves, we awake to flat realities, lamenting the change, like the beggar who dreamt himself a prince.
What mean we by genius, but the power of accomplishing great things without the means generally reputed necessary to that end?