Party is the madness of many-for the gain of a few. To endeavor to work upon the vulgar with fine fenfe, is like attempting to hew blocks of marble with a razor.

Superftition is the fpleen of the foul,

He who tells a lie is not fenfible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one.

Some people will never learn any thing; for this reafon, because they understand every thing too foon

Whilft an author is yet living, we estimate his powers by the worst performance; when he is dead, we rate them by his best. Men are grateful, in the fame degree that they are refentful. Young men are fubtle arguers; the cloke of honor covers all their faults, as that of paffion, all their follies.

Economy is no difgrace; it is better living on a little, than out living a great deal.

Next to the fatisfaction I receive in the profperity of an honeft man, I am best pleased with the confufion of a rafcal. What is often termed fhynefs, is nothing more than refined fenfe, and an indifference to common obfervations.

To endeavor all one's days to fortify our minds with learning and philofophy, is to spend so much in armor, that one has nothing left to defend.

Deference often shrinks and withers as much upon the approach of intimacy, as the fenfitive plant does upon the touch of one's finger.

Modesty makes large amends for the pain it gives to the perfons who poffefs it, by the partiality it excites in their favor. The difference there is betwixt honor and honefty feems, to be chiefly in the motive. The honeft man does that from duty, which the man of honor does for the fake of character.

A liar begins with making falfehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itfelf appear like falsehood.

Virtue fhould be confidered as a part of taste; and we should as much avoid deceit, or finifter meaning in difcourfe, as we fhould puns, bad language or false grammar.

The higher character a perfon fupports, the more he should regard his minuteft actions.

CHAP. VII.

DEFERENCE is the most complicated, the most indirect, and most elegant of all compliments.

To be at once a rake and to glory in the character, difcovers at the fame a bad difpofition and a bad taste.

How is it poffible to expect that mankind will take advice, when they will not fo much as take warning?

Altho' men are accused for not knowing their own weaknefs, yet perhaps a few know their own ftrength. It is in men as in foils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold, which the owner knows not of.

Fine fenfe and exalted fenfe are not half so valuable as common fenfe. There are forty men of wit for one man of sense; and he that will carry nothing about him but gold, will be every day at a loss for want of ready change.

Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skilful hands; in unskilful, the moft mischievous.

A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but faying in other words, that he is wifer to day than he was yesterday.

Wherever I find a great deal of gratitude in a poor man, I take it for granted there would be as much generosity, if he was a rich man.

It often happens that those are the beft people, whofe characters have been moft injured by flanderers; as we ufually find that to be the fweeteft fruit, which the birds have been picking at.

The eye of a critic is often like a microscope, made fo very fine and nice, that it discovers the atoms, grains and minutest particles, without ever comprehending the whole, comparing the parts, or feeing all at once the harmony.

It is

Honor is but a fictitious kind of honefty; a mean, but a neceffary substitute for it in focieties which have none. a fort of paper credit, with which men are obliged to trade, who are deficient in the sterling cafh of true morality and religion.

Perfons of great delicacy fhould know the certainty of the following truth; there are many cafes which occafion fufpenfe, in which, whatever they determin, they will repent of their determination; and this thro a propenfity of human nature, to fancy happiness in thofe fchemes which it does not purfue.

CHAP. VIII.

WHAT a piece of work is man! how noble in reason !

how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehenfion, how like a God!"

If to do, were as eafy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages, princes' palaces. He is a good divine that follows his own inftructions. I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than to be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching.

Men's evil manners live in brafs; their virtues we write in

water.

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would defpair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.

The fenfe of death is most in apprehenfion ;
And the poor beetle that we tread upon,
In corporal fufferance, feels a pang as great,
As when a giant dies.

How far the little candle throws his beam!
So fhines a good deed in a naughty world.
-Love all, truft a few,

Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy,
Rather in power than in ufe: keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key be check'd for filence,
But never task'd for fpeech.

Our indiscretion fometimes ferves us well,

When our deep plots do fail: and that should teach us,
There's a divinity that fhapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.

What stronger breaft plate th a heart untainted!
Thrice is he arm'd, that hath his quarrel juft.

And he but naked (tho' lock'd up in steel)
Whofe confcience with injuftice is corrupted.

The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The folemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherits, fhall diffolve;
And, like the bafelefs fabric of a vifion,
Leave not a wreck behind! We are fuch stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
unded with a fleep.

So it falls out,

That what we have we prize not to the worth
While we enjoy it; but being lack'd and loft,
Why then we wreak the value; then we find
The virtue that poffeffion would not show us,
While it was ours.

Cowards die many times before their deaths
The valiant never taste of death but once.
There is fome foul of goodness in things evil,
Would men obfervingly diftil it out,
For our bad neighbors make us early stirrers;
Which is both healthful, and good husbandry;
Befides they are our outward confciences,
And preachers to us all: admonishing
That we should dress us fairly for our end.

O momentary grace of mortal men,
Which we more hunt for than the grace of God!
Who builds his hope in the air of men's fair looks,
Lives like a drunken failor on a mast,

Ready with every nod to tumble down
Into the fatal bowels of the deep.

Who fhall go about

To cozen fortune and be honorable
Without the ftamp of merit? let none prefume
To wear an undeferved dignity.

O that eftates, degrees, and offices,

Were not derived corruptly, that clear honor
Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!
How many then should cover, that stand bare!
How many be commanded, that command!

-Tis flander!

Whofe edge is fharper than a fword; whofe tongue Out-venoms all the worms of Nile; whofe breath Rides on the pofting winds, and doth belie

All corners of the world. Kings, queens and ftates, Maids, matrons, nay the fecrets of the

This viperous flander enters.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

grave,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows, and in miferies.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty space from day to day,
To the last fyllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dufky death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking fhadow, a poor player,
That ftruts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more! It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of found and fury,
Signifying nothing.

He that would pafs the latter part of his life with honor and decency, must when he is young, confider that he shall one day be old-and remember, when he is old, that he has once been young.

Avarice is always poor, but poor, by her own fault.

The maxim which Periander of Corinth, one of the feven fages of Greece, left as a memorial of his knowledge and benevolence, was, "Be mafter of your anger." He confidered anger as the great difturber of human life, the chief enemy both of public happiness and private tranquility; and thought he could not lay on posterity a stronger obligation to reverence his memory, than by leaving them a falutary caution against this outrageous paffion.

The univerfal axiom, in which all complafance is included, and from which flow all the formalities which custom has established in civilized nations, is "that no man fhould give any preference to himself."-A rule fo comprehenfive and certain, that, perhaps it is not eafy for the mind to imagin an incivility, without fuppofing it to be broken.

The foundation of content must be laid in a man's own mind; and he who has fo little knowledge of human nature, as to feek happiness by changing any thing but his own difpofition, will wafte his life in fruitlefs efforts, and multiply griefs which he purposes to remove.

No rank in life precludes the efficacy of a well timed compliment. When Queen Elizabeth afked an Embassador how he liked her ladies, he replied, It is hard to judge of tars

in prefence of the fun."