"Indulge, and to thy genius freely give; For not to live at ease, is not to live. Death stalks behind thee, and each flying hour Does some loose remnant of thy life devour. Live, while thou liv'st; for death will make us all A name, a nothing but an old wife's tale."

"I well believe, thou wouldst be great as he; For every man's a fool to that degree: All wish the dire prerogative to kill; Ev'n they would have the power who want the will."

"Look round the habitable world: how few Know their own good, or knowing it, pursue."

"I am reading Jonson's verses to the memory of Shakespeare; an insolent, sparing, and invidious panegyric."

"For those whom God to ruin has design'd, He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind."

"Possess your soul with patience."

"Secret guilt by silence is betrayed."

"T' abhor the makers, and their laws approve, Is to hate traitors and the treason love."

"For present joys are more to flesh and blood Than a dull prospect of a distant good."

"Jealousy, the jaundice of the soul."

"War seldom enters but where wealth allures."

"All have not the gift of martyrdom."

"As long as words a different sense will bear, And each may be his own interpreter, Our airy faith will no foundation find; The word's a weathercock for every wind."

"Too black for heav'n, and yet too white for hell."

"And kind as kings upon their coronation day."

"Reason to rule, mercy to forgive: The first is law, the last prerogative."

"Of all the tyrannies on human kind The worst is that which persecutes the mind."

"For truth has such a face and such a mien As to be loved needs only to be seen."

"And doomed to death, though fated not to die."

"She feared no danger, for she knew no sin."

"So, when the last and dreadful Hour This crumbling Pageant shall devour, The trumpet shall be heard on high, The dead shall live, the living die, And musick shall untune the Sky."

"The soft complaining flute, In dying notes, discovers The woes of hopeless lovers."

"The trumpet's loud clangor Excites us to arms."

"What passion cannot Music raise and quell?"

"From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began: When nature underneath a heap Of jarring atoms lay, And could not heave her head, The tuneful voice was heard from high, 'Arise, ye more than dead!' Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry, In order to their stations leap, And Music's power obey. From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began: From harmony to harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason closing full in Man."

"Nay, tho' our Atoms shou'd revolve by chance, And matter leape into the former dance; Tho' time our Life and motion cou'd restore, And make our Bodies what they were before, What gain to us wou'd all this bustle bring, The new made man wou'd be another thing; When once an interrupting pause is made, That individual Being is decay'd. We, who are dead and gone, shall bear no part In all the pleasures, nor shall feel the smart, Which to that other Mortal shall accrew, Whom of our Matter Time shall mould anew."

"Milton's Paradise Lost is admirable; but am I therefore bound to maintain, that there are no flats amongst his elevations, when it is evident he creeps along sometimes for above an hundred lines together? Cannot I admire the height of his invention, and the strength of his expression, without defending his antiquated words, and the perpetual harshness of their sound? It is as much commendation as a man can bear, to own him excellent; all beyond it is idolatry."

"I can enjoy her while she's kind; But when she dances in the wind, And shakes the wings and will not stay, I puff the prostitute away: The little or the much she gave is quietly resign'd: Content with poverty, my soul I arm; And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm."

"Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine, The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine. Not heaven itself upon the past has power; But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour."

"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."