Quotes to inspire and reflect

Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigu’d, I said; Tie up the knocker! say I’m sick, I’m dead. The Dog-star rages!

Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God.

Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend. 6

A wit’s a feather, and a chief a rod; An honest man’s the noblest work of God.

Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law, Pleas’d with a rattle, tickled with a straw: Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite: Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, And beads and prayer books are the toys of age! Pleas’d with this bauble still, as that before; Till tir’d he sleeps, and life’s poor play is o’er.

All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good; And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Die of a rose in aromatic pain?

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest.

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or milky way; Yet simple nature to his hope has giv’n, Behind the cloud-topp’d hill, an humbler heav’n.

Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood.

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d, And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Eye Nature’s walks, shoot folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise: Laugh where we must, be candid where we can; But vindicate the ways of God to man.

Say first, of God above or man below, What can we reason but from what we know?

Awake, my St. John! 4 leave all meaner things To low ambition, and the pride of kings. Let us, since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die, Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan.

In wit a man, simplicity a child.

You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come: Knock as you please, there’s nobody at home.

Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time, And make two lovers happy.

“Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed” was the ninth beatitude.

Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere, In action faithful, and in honor clear; Who broke no promise, served no private end, Who gain’d no title, and who lost no friend.

The ruling passion, be it what it will, The ruling passion conquers reason still.

But thousands die, without or this or that, Die, and endow a college, or a cat.

Woman’s at best a contradiction still.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree? 2

She who ne’er answers till a husband cools, Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules; Charms by accepting, by submitting, sways, Yet has her humor most, when she obeys.

And mistress of herself, though china fall.

In men, we various ruling passions find; In women, two almost divide the kind; Those, only fix’d, they first or last obey, The love of pleasure, and the love of sway.

Men, some to business, some to pleasure take; But ev’ry woman is at heart a rake.

Chaste to her husband, frank to all beside, A teeming mistress, but a barren bride.

Wise wretch! with pleasures too refin’d to please; With too much spirit to be e’er at ease; With too much quickness ever to be taught; With too much thinking to have common thought. You purchase pain with all that joy can give, And die of nothing but a rage to live.

’Tis education forms the common mind: Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclin’d.

Most women have no characters at all.

Oh name forever sad! forever dear! Still breath’d in sighs, still usher’d with a tear.

Now warm in love, now with’ring in my bloom, Lost in a convent’s solitary gloom!

Dear, damn’d, distracting town, farewell! Thy fools no more I’ll tease: This year in peace, ye critics, dwell, Ye harlots, sleep at ease!

Luxurious lobster-nights, farewell, For sober, studious days!

Tell me, Muse, of the man of many wiles.

True friendship’s laws are by this rule express’d, Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.

She moves a goddess, and she looks a queen.

The wrath of Peleus’ son, the direful spring Of all the Grecian woes, O goddess sing!

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, Live o’er each scene, and be what they behold: For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage.

Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain, Here earth and water seem to strive again, Not chaos-like together crush’d and bruis’d, But, as the world, harmoniously confus’d: Where order in variety we see, And where, though all things differ, all agree.

But when to mischief mortals bend their will, How soon they find fit instruments of ill!

The meeting points the sacred hair dissever From the fair head, forever, and forever! Then flash’d the living lightning from her eyes, And screams of horror rend th’ affrighted skies.

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

Let spades be trumps! she said, and trumps they were.

At every word a reputation dies.