Ethics and Morality

Of all the griefs that harass the distrest, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest.

Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can.

Religion blushing veils her sacred fires, And unawares Morality expires. Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine; Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine! Lo! thy dread empire Chaos! is restor’d: Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall, And universal darkness buries all.

The people’s voice is odd, It is, and it is not, the voice of God.

Get place and wealth, if possible with grace; If not, by any means get wealth and place.

A patriot is a fool in ev’ry age.

That true self-love and social are the same.

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

Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow; The rest is all but leather or prunella.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

At every word a reputation dies.

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

But where’s the man who counsel can bestow, Still pleas’d to teach, and yet not proud to know?

Some praise at morning what they blame at night, But always think the last opinion right.

All seems infected that th’ infected spy, As all looks yellow to the jaundic’d eye.

At ev’ry trifle scorn to take offense.

Some judge of authors’ names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance. ’Tis not enough no harshness gives offense; The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.