No matter now in virtue who excels, MCLV. Philosophers say, that man is a microcosm, or a little world resembling in miniature every part of the great; and, in my opinion, the body natural may be compared to the body politic; and if this be so, how can the Epicurean's opinion be true, that the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms; which I will no more believe, than that the accidental jumbling of the letters of the alphabet could fall by chance into a most ingenious and learned treatise of philosophy.-Swift. MCLVI. The date of human life is too short to recompense the cares which attend the most private condition: therefore it is, that our souls are made, as it were, too big for it; and extend themselves in the prospect of a longer existence, in good fame, and memory of worthy actions, after our decease.-Steele. MCLVII. We find but few historians in all ages, who have been diligent enough in their search for truth: it is their common method to take on trust what they distribute to the public; by which means a falsehood once received from a famed writer becomes traditional to posterity.-Dryden. MCLVIII. The usurer hangs the cozener. Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; Robes, and furred gowns, hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks: Arm it in rags, a pigmy straw doth pierce it. None has more frequent conversations with disagreeable self than the man of pleasure; his enthusiasms are but few and transient; his appetites, like angry credi tors, continually making fruitless demands for what he is unable to pay; and the greater his former pleasures, the more strong his regret, the more impatient his expectations. A life of pleasure is, therefore, the most unpleasing life.-Goldsmith. MCLX. Love's but the frailty of the mind, A sickly flame, which, if not fed, expires; MCLXI. Congreve. All that nature has prescribed must be good; and as death is natural to us, it is absurdity to fear it. Fear loses its purpose when we are sure it cannot preserve us, and we should draw resolution to meet it, from the impossibility to escape it.-Steele. MCLXII. When a man is made up wholly of the dove, without the least grain of the serpent in his composition, he becomes ridiculous in many circumstances of life, and very often discredits his best actions.-Addison. MCLXIII. There is nothing which must end, to be valued for its continuance. If hours, days, months, and years pass away, it is no matter what hour, what day, what month, or what year we die. The applause of a good actor is due to him at whatever scene of the play he makes his exit. It is thus in the life of a man of sense; a short life is sufficient to manifest himself a man of honour and virtue; when he ceases to be such, he has lived too long; and while he is such, it is of no consequence to him how long he shall be so, provided he is so to his life's end.Steele. So court a mistress, she denies you: MCLXV. Ben Jonson, It has been said that he who retires to solitude is either a beast or an angel; the censure is too severe, and the praise unmerited; the discontented being, who retires from society, is generally some good-natured man, who has begun his life without experience, and knew not how to gain it in his intercourse with mankind, -Goldsmith. MCLXVI. But she did scorn a present that I sent her. A woman sometimes scorns what best contents her. For scorn at first makes after-love the more. MCLXVII. Shakspeare. Ovid, sen. Name me a profest poet, that his poetry did ever afford him so much as a competency. Ay, your god of poets there whom all of you admire and reverence so much, Homer, what was he? what was he? Tucca. Marry, I'll tell thee, old swaggerer: he was a poor, blind rhyming, rascal, that lived obscurely up and down in booths and tap-houses, and scarce ever made a good meal in his sleep. Ovid, sen. You'll tell me his name shall live; and that now being dead, his works have eternized him, and made him divine: but could his divinity feed him while he lived? could his name feast him? Tucca. Or purchase him a senator's revenue, could it? Ovid, sen. Aye, or give him place in the commonwealth? worship, or attendants? make him be carried in his litter? Tucca. Thou speakest sentences, old Bias. The Poetaster-Ben Jonson. MCLXVIII. It is safer to affront some people than to oblige them; for the better a man deserves, the worse they will speak of him; as if the professing of open hatred to their benefactors were an argument that they lie under no obligation.-Seneca. MCLXIX. Painters of history make the dead live, and do not begin to live themselves till they are dead. I paint the living, and they make me live.-Sir Godfrey Kneller→→ in defence of Portrait-painting. MCLXX. The sense of death is most in apprehension; MCLXXI. Shakspeare. To resist temptation once is not a sufficient proof of honesty. If a servant, indeed, were to resist the continued temptation of silver lying in a window, as some people let it lie, when he is sure his master does not know how much there is of it, he would give a strong proof of honesty. But this is a proof to which you have no right to put a man. You know, humanly speaking, there is a certain degree of temptation which will overcome any virtue. Now, in so far as you approach temptation to a man, you do him an injury; and, if he is overcome, you share his guilt.-Johnson. MCLXXII. Madame Superbia, You 're studying the lady's library, The looking-glass: 'tis well, so great a beauty Her peacock's tail with stars: 'tis she arrays She decks the fields with various flow'rs: 'tis she Colax to Philitomia, or the Proud Lady-Randolph. MCLXXIII. Before an affliction is digested, consolation ever comes too soon; and after it is digested, it comes too late: there is but a mark between these two, as fine almost as a hair, for a comforter to take aim at.-Sterne. MCLXXIV. Critics are like a kind of flies that breed In wild fig trees, and, when they 're grown up, feed MCLXXV. Butler. The covetous man heaps up riches, not to enjoy them, but to have them; and starves himself in the midst of plenty, and most unnaturally cheats and robs himself |