"His friends beheld, and pity’d him in vain, For what advice can ease a lover’s pain? Absence, the best expedient they could find, Might save the fortune, if not cure the mind."

"Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; And every little absence is an age."

"Winds murmur’d through the leaves your short delay, And fountains o’er their pebbles chid your stay: But, with your presence cheer’d, they cease to mourn, And walks wear fresher green at your return."

"All, all of a piece throughout: Thy chase had a beast in view; Thy wars brought nothing about; Thy lovers were all untrue. 'Tis well an old age is out, And time to begin a new."

"Joy rul'd the day, and Love the night."

"Calms appear, when storms are past, Love will have its hour at last."

"The sword within the scabbard keep, And let mankind agree."

"A very merry, dancing, drinking, Laughing, quaffing, and unthinkable time."

"When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind!"

"Fool, not to know that love endures no tie, And Jove but laughs at lovers' perjury."

"Ill habits gather by unseen degrees, As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas."

"And that one hunting, which the Devil design'd For one fair female, lost him half the kind."

"Art may err, but Nature cannot miss."

"Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call today his own; He who, secure within, can say, Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today."

"More Safe, and much more modest 'tis, to say God wou'd not leave Mankind without a way: And that the Scriptures, though not every where Free from Corruption, or intire, or clear, Are uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, intire, In all things which our needfull Faith require. If others in the same Glass better see 'Tis for Themselves they look, but not for me: For my Salvation must its Doom receive Not from what others, but what I believe."

"Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars To lonely, weary, wandering travellers Is reason to the soul; and as on high Those rolling fires discover but the sky Not light us here, so reason's glimmering ray Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way, But guide us upward to a better day: And as those nightly tapers disappear When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere, So pale grows reason at religion's sight, So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light."

"A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth."

"Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command Some peaceful province in acrostic land. There thou mayst wings display and altars raise, And torture one poor word ten thousand ways."

"The rest to some faint meaning make pretense, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day."

"All human things are subject to decay, And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey."

"Made still a blund'ring kind of melody; Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in. Free from all meaning, whether good or bad, And in one word, heroically mad."

"Beware the fury of a patient man."

"Never was patriot yet, but was a fool."

"Nor is the people's judgment always true: The most may err as grossly as the few."

"Thus in a pageant-show a plot is made; And peace itself is war in masquerade."

"His tribe were God Almighty's gentlemen."

"Every man with him was God or devil."

"A man so various, that he seem’d to be Not one, but all mankind’s epitome; Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon."

"But far more numerous was the herd of such, Who think too little, and who talk too much."

"Not only hating David, but the king."

"Self-defence is nature's eldest law"

"Better one suffer, than a nation grieve."

"All empire is no more than power in trust."

"The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme, The young men's vision, and the old men's dream!"

"And heaven had wanted one immortal song. But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand, And fortune's ice prefers to virtue's land."

"In friendship false, implacable in hate, Resolved to ruin, or to rule the state."

"And all to leave, what with his toil he won To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son."

"Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide."

"Plots, true or false, are necessary things, To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings."

"Whate’er he did, was done with so much ease, In him alone 'twas natural to please."

"Nor can his blessed soul look down from heaven, Or break the eternal sabbath of his rest."

"As sure as a gun."

"They say everything in the world is good for something."

"He's a sure card."

"Second thoughts, they say, are best."

"Like a led victim, to my death I'll go, And, dying, bless the hand that gave the blow."