“A lily of a day Is fairer far in May, Although it fall and die that night, It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see, And in short measures life may perfect be.”

Chance will not do the work. Chance sends the breeze; But if the pilot slumber at the helm, The very wind that wafts us tow’rds the port May dash us on the shoals. The steersman’s part Is vigilance, or blow it rough or smooth.

Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need

Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike; One doth not stroke me, nor the other strike.

Tell troth and shame the devil.

Let argument bear no unmusical sound.

Opinion is a light, vain, crude, and imperfect thing.

Who casts to write a living line, must sweat.

You are not now to think what’s best to do, As in beginnings, but what must be done, Being thus enter’d; and slip no advantage That may secure you. Let them call it mischief; When it is past, and prosper’d , ’twill be virtue.

Princes that would their people should do well Must at themselves begin, as at the head; For men, by their example, pattern out Their limitations, and regard of laws: A virtuous court a world to virtue draws.

A good dog deserves a good bone.

Aristotle was the first accurate critic and truest judge nay, the greatest philosopher the world ever had; for he noted the vices of all knowledges, in all creatures, and out of many men’s perfections in a science he formed still one Art.

Your highest female grace is silence.

How near to good is what is fair!

And where she went, the flowers took thickest root, As she had sow’d them with her odorous foot.

Out of clothes out of countenance, out of countenance out of wit.

I see compassion may become a justice, though it be a weakness, I confess, and nearer a vice than a virtue.

I suppose my bodily proportions are quite flattering. I’m ripped, doing something I wouldn’t normally do with my body, or having done to it, involving Watson.

Nature is just to all mankind, and repays them for their industry. She renders them industrious by annexing rewards in proportion to their labor.

Insanity is a lack of proportion.

One must feel sorry for those who have strange tastes, but never insult them. Their wrong is Nature’s too; they are no more responsible for having come into the world with tendencies unlike ours than are we for being born bandy-legged or well-proportioned.

Man is distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect:–for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty.

We care what happens to people only in proportion as we know what people are.

I drink the wine of aspiration and the drug of illusion. Thus I am never dull.

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.