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| A God all mercy is a God unjust. | 1 |
| A man of pleasure is a man of pains. | 2 |
| A soul without reflection, like a pile / Without inhabitant, to ruin runs. | 3 |
| All men may dare what has by man been done. | 4 |
| All men think all men mortal but themselves. | 5 |
| And can eternity belong to me, / Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour? | 6 |
| “And is this all?” cried Cæsar at his height, disgusted. | 7 |
| As from the wing no scar the sky retains, / The parted wave no furrow from the keel; So dies in human hearts the thought of death. | 8 |
| At thirty, man suspects himself a fool, / Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan. / At fifty, chides his infamous delay, / Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve. / Resolves—and re-resolves; then dies the same. | 9 |
| Be wise to-day; ’tis madness to defer. | 10 |
| Be wise with speed; / A fool at forty is a fool indeed. | 11 |
| By night an atheist half believes a God. | 12 |
| Can wealth give happiness? look around and see, / What gay distress! what splendid misery! / Whatever fortunes lavishly can pour, / The mind annihilates and calls for more. | 13 |
| Creation sleeps! ’Tis as the general pulse / Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause, / An awful pause, prophetic of her end. | 14 |
| Death joins us to the great majority; / ’Tis to be borne to Platos and to Cæsars; / ’Tis to be great for ever; / ’Tis pleasure, ’tis ambition, then, to die. | 15 |
| Death treads in pleasure’s footsteps round the world. | 16 |
| Early, bright, transient, chaste, as morning dew, / She sparkled, was exhaled, and went to heaven. | 17 |
| Earth, turning from the sun, brings night to man. | 18 |
| Eternity, depending on an hour. | 19 |
| Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death, / To break the shock blind Nature cannot shun, / And lands thought smoothly on the farther shore. | 20 |
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| Faith builds a bridge from the old world to the next. | 21 |
| Faith is not reason’s labour, but repose. | 22 |
| Fathers alone a father’s heart can know, / What secret tides of sweet enjoyment flow / When brothers love! But if their hate succeeds, / They wage the war, but ’tis the father bleeds. | 23 |
| For what are men who grasp at praise sublime, / But bubbles on the rapid stream of time, / That rise and fall, that swell and are no more, / Born and forgot, ten thousand in an hour. | 24 |
| Friendship’s the wine of life; but friendship new is neither strong nor pure. | 25 |
| Gold glitters most when virtue shines no more. | 26 |
| Guard well thy thought; / Our thoughts are heard in heaven. | 27 |
| He that lives in perpetual suspicion lives the life of a sentinel, of a sentinel never relieved. | 28 |
| Heaven’s Sovereign saves all beings but Himself that hideous sight—a naked human heart. | 29 |
| Hold their farthing candle to the sun. Of critics. | 30 |
| How blessings brighten as they take their flight! | 31 |
| How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, / How complicate, how wonderful is man! | 32 |
| How science dwindles, and how volumes swell, / How commentators each dark pasage shun, / And hold their farthing candle to the sun! | 33 |
| If wrong our hearts, our heads are right in vain. | 34 |
| It is falling in with their own mistaken ideas that makes fools and beggars of the half of mankind. | 35 |
| It is great, it is manly, to disdain disguise. | 36 |
| Joy wholly from without is false, precarious and short. Joy from within is like smelling the rose on the tree; it is more sweet, and fair, and lasting. | 37 |
| Joys are for the gods; / Man’s common course of nature is distress; / His joys are prodigies; and like them too, / Portend approaching ill. The wise man starts / And trembles at the perils of a bliss. | 38 |
| Judge before friendship, then confide till death, / Well for thy friend, but nobler far for thee. | 39 |
| Learning, like the lunar beam, affords light, not heat. | 40 |
| Let no man trust the first false step of guilt; it hangs upon a precipice, whose steep descent in last perdition ends. | 41 |
| Life is the triumph of our mouldering clay; death, of the spirit infinite, divine! | 42 |
| Like our shadows / Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines. | 43 |
| Look unto those they call unfortunate; / And, closer viewed, you’ll find they are unwise. | 44 |
| Man is not made to question, but adore. | 45 |
| Man is to man the sorest, surest ill…. / Earth trembles ere her yawning jaws devour; / And smoke betrays the wide-consuming fire; / Ruin from man is most conceal’d when near, / And sends the dreadful tidings in the blow. | 46 |
| Man’s grief is but his grandeur in disguise, and discontent is immortality. | 47 |
| Man’s heart eats all things, and is hungry still. | 48 |
| Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die. | 49 |
| More hearts pine away in secret anguish for unkindness from those who should be their comforters than for any other calamity in life. | 50 |
| Much learning shows how little mortals know; much wealth, how little worldlings can enjoy. | 51 |
| Nature is a friend to truth. | 52 |
| No blank, no trifle, Nature made or meant. | 53 |
| Nothing exceeds in ridicule, no doubt, / A fool in fashion, save a fool that’s out; / His passion for absurdity’s so strong, / He cannot bear a rival in the throng. | 54 |
| Nothing in Nature, much less conscious being, / Was e’er created solely for itself. | 55 |
| Nothing is insipid to the wise; / To thee insipid all but what is mad; / Joy season’d high and tasting strong of guilt. | 56 |
| Nought treads so silent as the foot of time. | 57 |
| On every thorn delightful wisdom grows; / In every rill a sweet instruction flows. | 58 |
| On Reason build Resolve! / That column of true majesty in man. | 59 |
| On the soft bed of luxury most kingdoms have expired. | 60 |
| One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine. | 61 |
| Pigmies are pigmies still, though perched on Alps; / And pyramids are pyramids in vales. | 62 |
| Poor in abundance, famished at a feast, man’s grief is but his grandeur in disguise, and discontent is immortality. | 63 |
| Procrastination is the thief of time. | 64 |
| Resembles ocean into tempest wrought, / To waft a feather or to drown a fly. | 65 |
| Sands form the mountains, moments make the year. | 66 |
| Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, / And think they grow immortal as they quote. | 67 |
| Souls made of fire, and children of the sun, with whom revenge is virtue. | 68 |
| Still seems it strange that thou shouldst live for ever? Is it less strange that thou shouldst live at all? This is a miracle; and that no more. | 69 |
| Sure as night follows day, / Death treads in pleasure’s footsteps round the world, / When pleasure treads the path which reason shuns. | 70 |
| Talents angel-bright, if wanting worth, are shining instruments in false ambition’s hand, to finish faults illustrious, and give infamy renown. | 71 |
| That life is long which answers life’s great end. | 72 |
| The bell strikes one. We take no note of time / But for its loss. | 73 |
| The course of nature is the art of God. | 74 |
| The dispute about religion and the practice of it seldom go together. | 75 |
| The man of wisdom is the man of years. | 76 |
| The man that blushes is not quite a brute. | 77 |
| The man that makes a character makes foes. | 78 |
| The time that bears no fruit deserves no name. | 79 |
| There is ever a certain languor attending the fulness of prosperity. When the heart has no more to wish, it yawns over its possessions, and the energy of the soul goes out, like a flame that has no more to devour. | 80 |
| Think naught a trifle, though it small appear; / Small sands the mountain, moments make the year, / And trifles life. | 81 |
| Thought discovered is the more possessed. | 82 |
| Thoughts shut up want air, and spoil, like bales unopened to the sun. | 83 |
| Time elaborately thrown away. | 84 |
| Time is eternity, / Pregnant with all eternity can give. | 85 |
| Time wasted is existence; used, is life. | 86 |
| Tired Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy Sleep! / He, like the world, his ready visit pays / Where Fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes: / Swift on his downy pinions flies from woe, / And lights on lids unsullied with a tear. | 87 |
| To-morrow is a satire on to-day, and shows its weakness. | 88 |
| Too low they build who build beneath the stars. | 89 |
| Unlearned men of books assume the care, / As eunuchs are the guardians of the fair. | 90 |
| Virtue alone has majesty in death. | 91 |
| Virtue alone outbuilds the pyramids; / Her monuments shall last when Egypt’s fall. | 92 |
| We take no note of time but from its loss. | 93 |
| Who does the best his circumstance allows, / Does well, does nobly; angels could no more. | 94 |
| Wishing, of all employments, is the worst. | 95 |
| Your learning, like the lunar beam, affords light but not heat. | 96 |
| Youth is not rich in time; it may be, poor; part with it, as with money, sparing; pay no moment but in purchase of its worth; and what its worth ask death-beds, they can tell. | 97 |
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