“Unbind the charms that in slight fables lie and teach that truth is truest poesy.”

Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.

Come, my best Friends! my Books! and lead me on.

Build yourself a book-nest to forget the world without.

Happy insect! what can be In happiness compared to thee? Fed with nourishment divine, The dewy morning’s gentle wine!

Our yesterday’s to-morrow now is gone, And still a new to-morrow does come on. We by to-morrow draw out all our store, Till the exhausted well can yield no more.

Who lets slip fortune, her shall never find: Occasion once past by, is bald behind.

Solitude can be used well by very few people. They who do must have a knowledge of the world to see the foolishness of it, and enough virtue to despise all the vanity.

Of all ills that one endures, hope is a cheap and universal cure.

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an eternal Now does always last.

Curiosity does, no less than devotion, pilgrims make.

Why dost thou heap up wealth, which thou must quit, Or what is worse, be left by it? Why dost thou load thyself when thou ‘rt to fly, Oh, man! ordain’d to die?

Fill all the Glasses there; for why Should every Creature Drink but I? Why, Man of Morals, tell me why?

All this world’s noise appears to me a dull, ill-acted comedy!

Poets by Death are conquer’d but the wit Of poets triumphs over it.

Ah, yet, e’er I descend to th’ grave, May I a small House and a large Garden have. And a few Friends, and many Books both true

Books should, not Business, entertain the Light; And Sleep, as undisturb’d as Death, the Night.

I wonder where you got that idea from? I mean, the idea that it’s feeble to change your mind once it’s made up. That’s a wrong idea, you know.

The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages is preserved into perpetuity by a nation’s proverbs, fables, folk sayings and quotations.

How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.