RESTRAINT and laborious effort are radical faults which destroy vitality. Extreme care to avoid censure and satisfy all, never answers its purpose. There is no escape from cavil. EGERTON BRYDGES. To exult Ev'n o'er an enemy oppressed, and heap SMOLLET. A NOBLE nature may commit a great fault; but what is that to the ceaseless pride, envy, malice, and conceit of a little mind? THE cankering rust corrodes the brightest steel; The same to-day, to-morrow, and for ever, AMBITION is the dropsy of the soul, Whose thirst we must not yield to, but controul. SEDLEY. How dreadfully delightful 'tis to lose Where round ten thousand radiant fonts of light, Pervades, and actuates the wondrous whole. -Stupendous view, vast boundless theatre! Thro' whose extended scenes numberless hosts Of beings rise successively to life; Form'd all for happiness by the good-giving hand Of its omnipotent artificer. BELLER. WE seem to have lived in the persons of our forefathers it is the labour and reward of vanity to extend the term of this ideal longevity. Our imagination is always active to enlarge the narrow circle in which nature has confined us. Fifty or an hundred years may be allotted to an individual; but we step forward beyond death with such hopes as religion and philosophy will suggest, and we fill up the silent vacancy that precedes our birth, by associating ourselves to the authors of our existence. Our calmer judgment will rather tend to moderate than to suppress the pride of an ancient and worthy race. The satirist may laugh, the philosopher may preach, but reason herself will respect the prejudice and habits which have been consecrated by the experience of mankind. GIBBON. M O SLEEP! thou sweetest gift of Heaven to man, To sense of yesterday, and pain of being: In thee, the wretch condemn'd is equal to his judge; Nay, all the shining glories men pursue When thou art wanted, are but empty noise; STEELE. HE that has delivered his country from oppression, or freed the world from ignorance and error, can excite the emulation of a very small number: but he that has repelled the temptations of poverty, and disdained to free himself from distress at the expense of his virtue, may animate multitudes by his example to the same firmness of heart and steadiness of resolution. JOHNSON. "Tis the fate of princes, that no knowledge From every channel; and still bears a relish DENHAM. THERE comes a voice that awakes my soul. It is the voice of years that are gone: they roll before me with all their deeds. OSSIAN. Is life so sweet, With all its pains, that Death's great writ of ease The noble human being-If we've fear'd that, MADDEN. I APPLAUD In thee the virtuous hope that dares look onward, And keeps the life-spark warm of future action : Beneath the cloak of patient sufferance, Act and appear, as time and prudence prompt thee. COLERIDGE. To forgive substantial injury is sometimes less a test of right temper than to turn an eye of Christian compassion upon the dwarfish distortion of a mind crippled in all its nobler parts. MARY BRUNTON. PASS but a moment, and this busy globe, MURPHY. THEY only are justifiable in seclusion who, like the Greek philosopher, make that very seclusion the means of serving and enlightening their race: who from their retreats send forth their oracles of wisdom, and make the desert which surrounds them eloquent with the voice of truth. JUST Heaven instructs us with an awful voice COLERIDGE. |