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| A subject’s faults a subject may proclaim, / A monarch’s errors are forbidden game. | 1 |
| Absence of occupation is not rest; / A mind quite vacant is a mind distress’d. | 2 |
| Affection lights a brighter flame / Than ever blazed by art. | 3 |
| Always filling, never full. | 4 |
| An idler is a watch that wants both hands; / As useless if it goes as if it stands. | 5 |
| Base in kind, and born to be a slave. | 6 |
| Behind a frowning providence / God hides a shining face. | 7 |
| But truths on which depend our main concern, / That ’tis our shame and misery not to learn, / Shine by the side of every path we tread, / With such a lustre, he that runs may read. | 8 |
| But war’s a game which, were their subjects wise, / Kings would not play at. | 9 |
| Ceremony leads her bigots forth, / Prepared to fight for shadows of no worth; / While truths, on which eternal things depend, / Find not, or hardly find, a single friend. | 10 |
| Defend me, common sense, say I, / From reveries so airy, from the toil / Of dropping buckets into empty wells, / And growing old with drawing nothing up. | 11 |
| Detested sport, that owes its pleasures to another’s pain. | 12 |
| Did charity prevail, the press would prove / A vehicle of virtue, truth, and love. | 13 |
| Domestic happiness! thou only bliss / Of happiness that has survived the Fall. | 14 |
| Dream after dream ensues, / And still they dream that they shall still succeed / And still are disappointed. | 15 |
| Events of all sorts creep or fly exactly as God pleases. | 16 |
| Fanaticism, soberly defined, / Is the false fire of an o’erheated mind. | 17 |
| Fate steals along with silent tread, / Found oftenest in what least we dread; / Frowns in the storm with angry brow, / But in the sunshine strikes the blow. | 18 |
| Folly ends where genuine hope begins. | 19 |
| Folly, letting down buckets into empty wells, and growing old with drawing nothing up. | 20 |
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| For ’tis a truth well known to most, / That whatsoever thing is lost, / We seek it, ere it comes to light, / In every cranny but the right. | 21 |
| Freedom has a thousand charms to show, / That slaves, howe’er contented, never know. | 22 |
| God is His own interpreter. | 23 |
| God made the country; man made the town. | 24 |
| God moves in a mysterious way / His wonders to perform; / He plants His footsteps in the sea, / And rides upon the storm. | 25 |
| God never meant that man should scale the heavens / By strides of human wisdom … He commands us in His Word / To seek Him rather where His mercy shines. | 26 |
| Grace abused brings forth the foulest deeds, / As richest soil the most luxuriant weeds. | 27 |
| Grace is a plant, where’er it grows! / Of pure and heavenly root; / But fairest in the youngest shows, / And yields the sweetest fruit. | 28 |
| He is the free man whom the truth makes free, / And all are slaves besides. | 29 |
| He lives who lives to God alone, / And all are dead beside; / For other source than God is none / Whence life can be supplied. | 30 |
| He who feeds the ravens / Will give His children bread. | 31 |
| His wit invites you by his looks to come, / But when you knock, it never is at home. | 32 |
| How much a dunce that has been sent to roam / Excels a dunce that has been kept at home! | 33 |
| I am monarch of all I survey, / My right there is none to dispute; / From the centre all round to the sea, / I am lord of the fowl and the brute. | 34 |
| I seek divine simplicity in him who handles things divine. | 35 |
| I would not enter on my list of friends … the man / Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. | 36 |
| In every heart are sown the sparks that kindle fiery war; occasion needs but fan them, and they blaze. | 37 |
| John Gilpin kiss’d his loving wife; / O’erjoy’d was he to find / That, though on pleasure she was bent, / She had a frugal mind. | 38 |
| Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, / But trust Him for His grace. | 39 |
| Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true, / A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew. | 40 |
| Knowledge and Wisdom, far from being one, / Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells / In heads replete with thoughts of other men; / Wisdom, in minds attentive to their own. | 41 |
| Knowledge is proud that he has learn’d so much; / Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. | 42 |
| Labour like this our want supplies, / And they must stoop who mean to rise. | 43 |
| Lands intersected by a narrow firth / Abhor each other. Mountains interposed / Make enemies of nations, which had else, / Like kindred drops, been mingled into one. | 44 |
| Learning itself, received into a mind / By nature weak or viciously inclined, / Serves but to lead philosophers astray, / Where children would with ease discern the way. | 45 |
| Letting down buckets into empty wells, and growing old with drawing nothing up. | 46 |
| Man, on the dubious waves of error tost. | 47 |
| Men deal with life as children with their play, / Who first misuse, then cast their toys away. | 48 |
| Mercy to him that shows it is the rule. | 49 |
| Mountains interposed / Make enemies of nations, who had else / Like kindred drops being mingled into one. | 50 |
| Nature is but a name for an effect whose cause is God. | 51 |
| No Hecuba, by aid of rouge and ceruse, is a Helen made. | 52 |
| No man was ever scolded out of his sins. | 53 |
| No wild enthusiast ever yet could rest / Till half mankind were like himself possess’d. | 54 |
| None but an author knows an author’s cares, / Or Fancy’s fondness for the child she bears. | 55 |
| Oars alone can ne’er prevail / To reach the distant coast; / The breath of heav’n must swell the sail, / Or all the toil is lost. | 56 |
| Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness, / Some boundless contiguity of shade, / Where rumour of oppression and deceit, / Of unsuccessful or successful war, / May never reach me more. | 57 |
| Philologists, who chase / A panting syllable through time and space, / Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark / To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah’s ark. | 58 |
| Poor though I am, despised, forgot, / Yet God, my God, forgets me not; / And he is safe, and must succeed, / For whom the Lord vouchsafes to plead. | 59 |
| Religion, if in heavenly truths attired, / Needs only to be seen to be admired. | 60 |
| Remorse, the fatal egg by pleasure laid. | 61 |
| Satan trembles when he sees / The weakest saint upon his knees. | 62 |
| Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs / Receive our air, that moment they are free; / They touch our country, and their shackles fall. | 63 |
| Some must be great. | 64 |
| Stillest streams oft water finest meadows, / And the bird that flutters least is longest on the wing. | 65 |
| The bud may have a bitter taste, / But sweet will be the flower. | 66 |
| The cups that cheer, but not inebriate. | 67 |
| The darkest day, live till to-morrow, will have passed away. | 68 |
| The innocent seldom find an uneasy pillow. | 69 |
| The path of sorrow, and that path alone, / Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown. | 70 |
| There is a pleasure in poetic pains which only poets know. | 71 |
| There’s mercy in every place, / And mercy, encouraging thought, / Gives even affliction a grace, / And reconciles man to his lot. | 72 |
| They whom truth and wisdom lead / Can gather honey from a weed. | 73 |
| Variety’s the very spice of life, / That gives it all its flavour. | 74 |
| War is a game which, were their subjects wise, kings should not play at. | 75 |
| We sacrifice to dress till household joys and comforts cease. Dress drains our cellar dry and keeps our larder lean. | 76 |
| When nations are to perish in their sins, / ’Tis in the Church the leprosy begins; / The priest, whose office is, with zeal sincere, / To watch the fountain and preserve it clear, / Carelessly nods and sleeps upon the brink, / While others poison what the flock must drink. | 77 |
| Who gives the lilies clothing, / Will clothe his people too. | 78 |
| Wisdom is a pearl; with most success / Sought in still water and beneath clear skies. | 79 |
| Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; / The clouds ye so much dread / Are big with mercy, and shall break / In blessings on your head. | 80 |
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