Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Death only this mysterious truth unfolds, The mighty soul how small a body holds.
For all the happiness mankind can gain Is not in pleasure, but in rest from pain.
Nor is the people's judgment always true: the most may err as grossly as the few.
These are the effects of doting age,--vain doubts and idle cares and over caution.
Roused by the lash of his own stubborn tail our lion now will foreign foes assail.
Farewell, too little, and too lately known, Whom I began to think and call my own.
The soft complaining flute, In dying notes, discovers The woes of hopeless lovers.
To take up half on trust, and half to try, Name it not faith but bungling bigotry.
Death in itself is nothing; but we fear to be we know not what, we know not where.
The perverseness of my fate is such that he's not mine because he's mine too much.
Riches cannot rescue from the grave, which claims alike the monarch and the slave.
An hour will come, with pleasure to relate Your sorrows past, as benefits of Fate.
Forgiveness to the injured does belong; but they ne'er pardon who have done wrong.
Content with poverty, my soul I arm; And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.
I am devilishly afraid, that's certain; but ... I'll sing, that I may seem valiant.
I have a soul that like an ample shield Can take in all, and verge enough for more.
He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
Presence of mind and courage in distress, Are more than arrives to procure success?
Fool, not to know that love endures no tie, And Jove but laughs at lovers' perjury.
Take not away the life you cannot give: For all things have an equal right to live.
Look around the inhabited world; how few know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.
A lively faith will bear aloft the mind, and leave the luggage of good works behind.
The love of liberty with life is given, And life itself the inferior gift of Heaven.
The fool of nature stood with stupid eyes And gaping mouth, that testified surprise.
He look'd in years, yet in his years were seen A youthful vigor, and autumnal green.
And write whatever Time shall bring to pass With pens of adamant on plates of brass.
An horrible stillness first invades our ear, And in that silence we the tempest fear.
But 'tis the talent of our English nation, Still to be plotting some new reformation.
I trade both with the living and the dead, for the enrichment of our native language.
Government itself at length must fall To nature's state, where all have right to all.
The thought of being nothing after death is a burden insupportable to a virtuous man.
Plots, true or false, are necessary things, To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.
And he, who servilely creeps after sense, Is safe, but ne'er will reach an excellence.
So softly death succeeded life in her, She did but dream of heaven, and she was there.
At home the hateful names of parties cease, And factious souls are wearied into peace.
Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; and every little absence is an age.
Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.
Luxurious kings are to their people lost, They live like drones, upon the public cost.
Mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though everything is altered.
Fattened in vice, so callous and so gross, he sins and sees not, senseless of his loss.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide.
Bets at first were fool-traps, where the wise like spiders lay in ambush for the flies.
If we from wealth to poverty descend, Want gives to know the flatterer from the friend.
How easy 'tis, when Destiny proves kind, With full-spread sails to run before the wind!
Heaven be thanked, we live in such an age, When no man dies for love, but on the stage.
Him of the western dome, whose weighty sense Flows in fit words and heavenly eloquence.
But Shakespeare's magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he.
So the false spider, when her nets are spread, deep ambushed in her silent den does lie.
When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.
But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand, And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land.