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| A fiery soul, which, working out its way / Fretted the pigmy body to decay. | 1 |
| A man so various, that he seem’d to be, / Not one, but all mankind’s epitome. | 2 |
| A satirical poet is the check of the layman on bad priests. | 3 |
| All faiths are to their own believers just / For none believe because they will, but must. | 4 |
| Art may err, but Nature cannot miss. | 5 |
| Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease. | 6 |
| Better to hunt in fields for health unbought, / Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. / The wise for cure on exercise depend; / God never made his work for man to mend. | 7 |
| Beware the fury of a patient man. | 8 |
| But far more numerous was the herd of such / Who think too little and who talk too much. | 9 |
| But Shakespeare’s magic could not copied be; / Within that circle none durst walk but he. | 10 |
| By education most have been misled. | 11 |
| Content with poverty, my soul I arm; / And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm. After Horace. | 12 |
| Damn’d neuters, in their middle way of steering, / Are neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring. | 13 |
| Deserted, at his utmost need, / By those his former bounty fed, / On the bare earth exposed he lies, / With not a friend to close his eyes. | 14 |
| Devotion in distress is born, but vanishes in happiness. | 15 |
| Distrust and darkness of a future state / Make poor mankind so fearful of their fate, / Death in itself is nothing; but we fear / To be we know not what, we know not where. | 16 |
| Divines but peep on undiscovered worlds, / And draw the distant landscape as they please. | 17 |
| Dreams are but interludes which fancy makes. / When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes; / Compounds a medley of disjointed things, / A mob of cobblers and a court of kings; / Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad; / Both are the reasonable soul run mad. | 18 |
| Errors like straws upon the surface flow; / He who would search for pearls must dive below. | 19 |
| Famine hath a sharp and meagre face. | 20 |
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| Fear’s a large promiser; who subject live / To that base passion, know not what they give. | 21 |
| Flames rise and sink by fits; at last they soar / In one bright flame, and then return no more. | 22 |
| Fool, not to know that love endures no tie, / And Jove but laughs at lovers’ perjury. | 23 |
| For they can conquer who believe they can. | 24 |
| For truth has such a face and such a mien, / As to be loved needs only to be seen. | 25 |
| Forgiveness to the injured does belong, / But they ne’er pardon who have done the wrong. | 26 |
| From stratagem to stratagem we run, / And he knows most who latest is undone: / An honest man will take a knave’s advice, / But idiots only will be cozened twice. | 27 |
| Genius must be born, and never can be taught. | 28 |
| Go, miser, go; for lucre sell thy soul; / Truck wares for wares, and trudge from pole to pole, / That men may say, when thou art dead and gone: / “See what a vast estate he left his son!” | 29 |
| God never made His work for man to mend. | 30 |
| Good-sense and good-nature are never separated, though the ignorant world has thought otherwise. | 31 |
| Great souls forgive not injuries till time has put their enemies within their power, that they may show forgiveness is their own. | 32 |
| Great wits are sure to madness near allied, / And thin partitions do their bounds divide. | 33 |
| Griefs assured are felt before they come. | 34 |
| Guards from outward harms are sent; / Ills from within thy reason must prevent. | 35 |
| Happy the man, and happy he alone, / He who can call to-day his own; / He who, secure within, can say, / To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day. After Horace. | 36 |
| Happy who in his verse can gently steer, / From grave to light, from pleasant to severe. | 37 |
| He needs no foil, but shines by his own proper light. | 38 |
| He rais’d a mortal to the skies, / She drew an angel down. | 39 |
| He trudged along, unknowing what he sought, / And whistled as he went, for want of thought. | 40 |
| He was exhaled; his great Creator drew / His spirit, as the sun the morning dew. | 41 |
| He who trusts a secret to his servant makes his own man his master. | 42 |
| He who would pry behind the scenes oft sees a counterfeit. | 43 |
| I am as free as Nature first made man, / Ere the base laws of servitude began, / When wild in woods the noble savage ran. | 44 |
| Ignorant of guilt, I fear not shame. | 45 |
| Ill habits gather by unseen degrees, / As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. | 46 |
| It is madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because in herself she is nothing, but is ruled by prudence. | 47 |
| Joy ruled the day and love the night. | 48 |
| Justice is blind; he knows nobody. | 49 |
| Keep to your subject close in all you say; / Nor for a sounding sentence ever stray. | 50 |
| Kindness by secret sympathy is tied; / For noble souls in nature are allied. | 51 |
| Kings fight for empires, madmen for applause. | 52 |
| Kings’ titles commonly begin by force, / Which time wears off, and mellows on to right. | 53 |
| Let fortune empty her whole quiver on me, / I have a soul that, like an ample shield, / Can take in all, and verge enough for more. | 54 |
| Let thy great deeds force fate to change her mind; / He that courts fortune boldly, makes her kind. | 55 |
| Lightning and thunder (heaven’s artillery) / As harbingers before th’ Almighty fly: / Those but proclaim His style, and disappear; / The stiller sounds succeed, and God is there. | 56 |
| Little souls on little shifts rely. | 57 |
| Look round the habitable world, how few / Know their own good, or, knowing it, pursue. After Juvenal. | 58 |
| Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; and every little absence is an age. | 59 |
| Love the sense of right and wrong confounds; / Strong love and proud ambition have no bounds. | 60 |
| Love which hath ends will have an end. | 61 |
| Love works a different way in different minds, / The fool enlightens and the wise he blinds. | 62 |
| Love’s the noblest frailty of the mind. | 63 |
| Mark if his birth makes any difference, if to his words it adds one grain of sense. | 64 |
| Men are but children of a larger growth; / Our appetites are apt to change as theirs, / And full as craving too, and full as vain. | 65 |
| Monkeys, as soon as they have brought forth their young, keep their eyes fastened on them, and never weary of admiring their beauty; so amorous is Nature of whatever she produces. | 66 |
| More pleased we are to see a river lead / His gentle streams along a flowery mead, / Than from high banks to hear loud torrents roar, / With foamy waters on a muddy shore. | 67 |
| Nations and empires flourish and decay, / By turns command, and in their turn obey. After Ovid. | 68 |
| Nobler is a limited command, / Given by the love of all your native land, / Than a sucessive title, long and dark, / Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah’s ark. | 69 |
| None but the brave deserve the fair. | 70 |
| Not heaven itself upon the past has power; / But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour. | 71 |
| Pains of love be sweeter far / Than all other pleasures are. | 72 |
| Painters draw their nymphs in thin and airy habits, but the weight of gold and of embroideries is reserved for queens and goddesses. | 73 |
| Parting is worse than death; it is death of love. | 74 |
| Pity only with new objects stays, / But with the tedious sight of woe decays. | 75 |
| Railing and praising were his usual themes; / And both, to show his judgment, in extremes; / So over-violent or over-civil, / That every man with him was god or devil. | 76 |
| Reason’s a staff for age when Nature’s gone; / But youth is strong enough to walk alone. | 77 |
| Reason’s glimmering ray / Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way, / But guide us upward to a better day. | 78 |
| Resolved to ruin or to rule the state. | 79 |
| Rich the treasure, / Sweet the pleasure; / Sweet is pleasure after pain. | 80 |
| Second thoughts, they say, are best. | 81 |
| Seek not thyself without thyself to find. | 82 |
| Seek not to know what must not be reveal’d; / Joys only flow where fate is most conceal’d; / Too busy man would find his sorrows more, / If future fortunes he should know before; / For by that knowledge of his destiny / He would not live at all, but always die. | 83 |
| Seldom contented, often in the wrong, / Hard to be pleased at all, and never long. | 84 |
| Slow to resolve, but in performance quick. | 85 |
| Snarl if you please, but you shall snarl without. | 86 |
| Soothed with the sound, the king grew vain, / Fought all his battles o’er again; / And thrice he routed all his foes, / And thrice he slew the slain. | 87 |
| Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, / Was everything by starts, and nothing long; / But in the course of one revolving moon / Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon. | 88 |
| Strange cozenage! none would live past years again; / Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; / And from the dregs of life think to receive / What the first sprightly running could not give. | 89 |
| Study thyself; what rank or what degree / The wise Creator hath ordained for thee. | 90 |
| Such only enjoy the country as are capable of thinking when they are there; then they are prepared for solitude, and in that case solitude is prepared for them. | 91 |
| The conscious water saw its god and blushed. On the water into wine at Cana. | 92 |
| The fates but only spin the coarser clue; / The finest of the wool is left for you. | 93 |
| The fortitude of a Christian consists in patience. | 94 |
| (The mob is) the scum that rises uppermost when the nation boils. | 95 |
| The soul shut up in her dark room, / Viewing so clear abroad, at home sees nothing; / But, like a mole in earth, busy and blind, / Works all her folly up, and casts it outward / To the world’s open view. | 96 |
| The wretched have no friends. | 97 |
| There is a pleasure, sure, in being mad, which none but mad men know. | 98 |
| Three poets in three distant ages born, / Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. / The first in loftiness of thought surpass’d; / The next, in majesty; in both, the last. / The force of Nature could no further go; / To make a third, she join’d the former two. | 99 |
| ’Tis not enough when swarming faults are writ, / That here and there are scatter’d sparks of wit. | 100 |
| To threats the stubborn sinner oft is hard, / Wrapp’d in his crimes, against the storm prepared; / But, when the milder beams of mercy play, / He melts, and throws his cumbrous cloak away. | 101 |
| To yourself be critic most severe. | 102 |
| Virtue, though in rags, will keep one warm. After Horace. | 103 |
| We ought to attempt no more than what is in the compass of our genius and according to our vein. | 104 |
| Whate’er he did was done with so much ease, / In him alone ’twas natural to please. | 105 |
| When I consider life, ’tis all a cheat. / Yet fool’d with hope, men favour the deceit; / Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay. / To-morrow’s falser than the former day; / Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest / With some new joys, cuts off what we possest. | 106 |
| When monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes. | 107 |
| Wild ambition loves to slide, not stand; / And Fortune’s ice prefers to Virtue’s land. | 108 |
| Your words are like notes of dying swans— / Too sweet to last. | 109 |
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