| C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917. | | | | Armstrong |
| | | | For pale and trembling anger rushes in |
| With faltering speech, and eyes that wildly stare, |
| Fierce as the tiger, madder than the seas, |
| Desperate and armed with more than human strength. |
| 1 |
| | Good native Taste, tho’ rude, is seldom wrong, |
| Be it in music, painting, or in song: |
| But this, as well as other faculties, |
| Improves with age and ripens by degrees. |
| 2 |
| | He chooses best, whose labor entertains |
| His vacant fancy most; the toil you hate |
| Fatigues you soon, and scarce improves your limbs. |
| 3 |
| | He knows enough, the mariner, who knows |
| Where lurk the shelves, and where the whirlpools boil, |
| What signs portend the storm: to subtler minds |
| He leaves to scan, from what mysterious cause |
| Charybdis rages in the Ionian wave; |
| Whence those impetuous currents in the main |
| Which neither oar nor sail can stem; and why |
| The roughening deep expects the storm, as sure |
| As red Orion mounts the shrouded heaven. |
| 4 |
| | How happy he whose toil |
| Has o’er his languid pow’rless limbs diffus’d |
| A pleasing lassitude; he not in vain |
| Invokes the gentle Deity of dreams. |
| His pow’rs the most voluptuously dissolve |
| In soft repose; on him the balmy dews |
| Of Sleep with double nutriment descend. |
| 5 |
| | Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, |
| Expels diseases, softens every pain, |
| Subdues the rage of poison and of plague. |
| 6 |
| | Of right and wrong he taught |
| Truths as refined as ever Athens heard; |
| And (strange to tell!) he practised what he preach’d. |
| 7 |
| | Riches are oft by guilt and baseness earn’d; |
| Or dealt by chance to shield a lucky knave, |
| Or throw a cruel sunshine on a fool. |
| But for one end, one much-neglected use, |
| Are riches worth your care; (for nature’s wants |
| Are few, and without opulence supplied;) |
| This noble end is, to produce the soul; |
| To show the virtues in their fairest light; |
| To make humanity the minister |
| Of bounteous Providence; and teach the breast |
| The generous luxury the gods enjoy. |
| 8 |
| | The body * * * |
| Much toil demands; the lean elastic less. |
| While winter chills the blood and binds the veins, |
| No labors are too hard; by those you ’scape |
| The slow diseases of the torpid year, |
| Endless to name. |
| 9 |
| | There are, while human miseries abound, |
| A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth, |
| Without one fool or flatterer at your board, |
| Without one hour of sickness or disgust. |
| 10 |
| | There is, they say, (and I believe there is), |
| A spark within us of th’ immortal fire, |
| That animates and moulds the grosser frame; |
| And when the body sinks, escapes to heaven; |
| Its native seat, and mixes with the gods. |
| 11 |
| | Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones, |
| And tottering empires rush by their own weight. |
| 12 |
| | ’Tis chiefly taste, or blunt, or gross, or fine, |
| Makes life insipid, bestial, or divine. |
| Better be born with taste to little rent |
| Than the dull monarch of a continent; |
| Without this bounty which the gods bestow, |
| Can Fortune make one favorite happy? No. |
| 13 |
| | Toil, and be strong; by toil the flaccid nerves |
| Grow firm, and gain a more compacted tone: |
| The greener juices are by toil subdued, |
| Mellow’d, and subtilis’d; the vapid old |
| Expell’d, and all the rancor of the blood. |
| 14 |
| | Virtue and sense are one; and trust me still |
| A faithless heart betrays the head unsound. |
| Virtue (for meree good nature is a fool) |
| Is sense and spirit with humanity. |
| ’Tis sometimes angry, and its frown confounds; |
| ’Tis even vindictive, but in vengeance just, |
| Knaves fain would laugh at it; some great ones dare |
| But at his heart the most undaunted son |
| Of Fortune dreads its name and awful charms. |
| 15 |
| | Virtue and sense are one; and, trust me, still |
| A faithless heart betrays the head unsound. |
| 16 |
| | Virtue, the strength and beauty of the soul, |
| Is the best gift of heaven; a happiness |
| That, even above the smiles and frowns of fate, |
| Exalts great Nature’s favorites; a wealth |
| That ne’er encumbers, nor can be transferr’d. |
| 17 |
| | What avails it that indulgent Heaven |
| From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come, |
| If we, ingenious to torment ourselves, |
| Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own? |
| Enjoy the present; nor with needless cares |
| Of what may spring from blind misfortune’s womb, |
| Appal the surest hour that life bestows. |
| Serene, and master of yourself, prepare |
| For what may come; and leave the rest to Heaven. |
| 18 |
| | Your friends avoid you, brutishly transform’d |
| They hardly know you, or if one remains |
| To wish you well, he wishes you in heaven. |
| 19 |
| ’T is not for mortals always to be blest. | 20 | | |
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