C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Suckling

But O, she dances such a way!

No sun upon an Easter-day,

Is half so fine a sight.

Her face is like the Milky Way i’ the sky,—

A meeting of gentle lights without a name.

Out upon it! I have lov’d

Three whole days together;

And am like to love three more,

If it prove fair weather.

Your gift is princely, but it comes too late,

And falls like sunbeams on a blasted blossom.

A quiet mediocrity is still to be preferred before a troubled superfluity.

Abruptness is an eloquence in parting, when spinning out the time is but the weaving of new sorrow.

Her feet beneath her petticoat like little mice stole in and out, as if they feared the light.

Joy never feasts so high as when the first course is of misery.

Opportunity, to statesmen, is as the just degree of heat to chemists; it perfects all the work.

Our sins, like to our shadows when our day is in its glory, scarce appeared; towards our evening how great and monstrous they are!

The prince of darkness is a gentleman.

Thou dwarf dressed up in giant’s clothes, that showest far off still greater than thou art.