James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899. Gay
They most assume who know the least. 1 Cowards are cruel, but the brave / Love mercy, and delight to save. 2 Dogmatic jargon, learn’d by heart, / Trite sentences, hard terms of art, / To vulgar ears seem so profound, / They fancy learning in the sound. 3 Fools may our scorn, not envy raise, / For envy is a kind of praise. 4 Fools, to talking ever prone, / Are sure to make their follies known. 5 Friendship, like love, is but a name, / Unless to one you stint the flame. 6 How happy could I be with either, / Were t’other dear charmer away! 7 If the heart of a man is depressed with cares, / The mist is dispelled when a woman appears. 8 In every age and clime we see / Two of a trade can never agree. 9 In love we are all fools alike. 10 Learning by study must be won, / ’Twas ne’er entail’d from son to son. 11 Life is a jest, and all things show it; / I thought so once, but now I know it. 12 Long experience made him sage. 13 No author ever spared a brother; / Wits are gamecocks to one another. 14 Shadow owes its birth to light. 15 So comes a reckoning when the banquet’s o’er,— / The dreadful reckoning, and men smile no more. 16 The slack sail shifts from side to side, / The boat, untrimm’d, admits the tide, / Borne down, adrift, at random tost, / The oar breaks short, the rudder’s lost. 17
