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.
Wishing of all employments is the worst.
Midway from Nothing to the Deity!
On every thorn, delightful wisdom grows, In every rill a sweet instruction flows.
We wish our names eternally to live; Wild dream! which ne’er had haunted human thought, Had not our natures been eternal too.
A man I knew who lived upon a smile, And well it fed him; he look’d plump and fair, While rankest venom foam’d through every vein.
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.