MCCXXXVI. Heaven doth with us, as we with torches do; Not light them for themselves: for if our virtues As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd, MCCXXXVII. Shakspeare. A boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him. Men have a solicitude about fame: and the greater share they have of it, the more afraid they are of losing it.-Johnson. MCCXXXVIII. In the intemperate meals and loud jollities of the common rate of country gentlemen, the practice and way of enjoyment is to put an end as fast as they can to that little particle of reason they have when they are sober. These men of wit and pleasure despatch their senses as fast as possible, by drinking until they cannot taste, smoking until they cannot see, and roaring until they cannot hear.-Steele. MCCXXXIX. The cynic hugs his poverty, The pelican her wilderness; And 'tis the Indian's pride to be Naked on frozen Caucasus: Contentment cannot smart; stoics, we see, Make torments easy to their apathy. MCCXL. Song, 1662. The unaffected of every country nearly resemble each other, and a page of our Confucius and your Tillotson have scarce any material difference. Paltry affectation, strained allusions, and disgusting finery, are easily at tained by those who choose to wear them; they are but too frequently the badges of ignorance, or of stupidity, whenever it would endeavour to please.-Goldsmith. MCCXLI. There are certain combined looks of simple subtlety, where whim, and sense, and seriousness, and nonsense, are so blended, that all the languages of Babel set loose together could not express them; they are communicated and caught so instantaneously, that you can scarce say which party is the infector. I leave it to your men of words to swell pages about it.-Sterne. MCCXLII. I charge thee, fling away ambition; By that sin fell angels: how can man, then, To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not, MCCXLIII. Shakspeare. He is happy whose circumstances suit his temper; but he is more excellent, who can suit his temper to any circumstances.-Hume. MCCXLIV. Suspicion overturns what confidence builds; And he that dares but doubt when there's no ground, Is neither to himself nor others sound. Massinger. MCCXLV. Sure there's a fate, and 'tis in vain To write, while these malignant planets reign. Not always kind to sense, or just to wit: And while it lasts, let buffoonery succeed To make us laugh, for never was moreneed. Dryden-to T. Southern. MCCXLVI. Health is certainly more valuable than money, because it is by health that money is procured; but thousands and millions are of small avail to alleviate the protracted tortures of the gout, to repair the broken organs of sense, or resuscitate the powers of digestion. Poverty is, indeed, an evil from which we naturally fly; but let us not run from one enemy to another, nor take shelter in the arms of sickness.-Johnson. MCCXLVII. It would be a happy thing if such as have real capacities for public service were employed in works of general use; but because a thing is every body's business, it is nobody's business: this is for want of public spirit.Addison. MCCXLVIII. Praise was originally a pension paid by the world, but the moderns, finding the trouble and charge too great in collecting it, have lately bought out the fee-simple; since which time the right of presentation is wholly in ourselves.-Swift. MCCXLIX. Sweetly it was said of a good old housekeeper, I had rather want meat than want guests; especially if they be courtly guests: for, never trust me, if one of their good legs made in a house be not worth all the good cheer a man can make them. He that would have fine guests, let him have a fine wife.-Ben Jonson. MCCL. From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty; (Like rats that ravine down their proper bane) A thirsty evil; and when we drink, we die. MCCLI. Shakspeare. Query. Whether churches are not dormitories of the living, as well as of the dead?-Swift. MCCLII. As we in England are a sober people, and generally inclined rather to a certain bashfulne s of behaviour in public, it is amazing whence some fellows come whom one meets with in this town; they do not at all seem to be the growth of our island; the pert, the talkative, all such as have no sense of the observation of others, are certainly of foreign extraction. As for my part, I am as much surprised when I see a talkative Englishman, as I should be to see the Indian pine growing on one of our quickset hedges. Where these creatures get sun enough to make them such lively animals, and dull men, is above my philosophy.-Steele. MCCLIII. Honours which from verse their source derive, MCCLIV. Congreve. If it were only the exercise of the body, the moving of the lips, the bending of the knee, man would as commonly step to heaven as they go to visit a friend: but to separate our thoughts and affections from the world, to draw forth all our graces, and increase each in its proper object, and to hold them to it till the work prospers in our hands, this, this is the difficulty.-Baxter. MCCLV. Kiss me, sweet: the wary lover Kiss again; no creature comes; When youths ply their stolen delights; To Celia-Ben Jonson MCCLVI. They who think too well of their own performances, are apt to boast in their preface how little time their works have cost them, and what other business of more importance interfered; but the reader will be as apt to ask the question, why they allowed not a longer time to make their works more perfect? and why they had so despicable an opinion of their judges, as to thrust their indigested stuff upon them, as if they deserved no better.-Dryden. MCCLVII. I never could learn by what right, nor conceive with what feelings a naturalist can occasion the misery of an innocent bird, and leave its young, perhaps to perish in a cold nest, because it has gay plumage, and has never been accurately delineated; or deprive even a butterfly of its natural enjoyments; because it has the misfortune to be rare and beautiful.-Sir W. Jones. |