“Water and air He for the Tenor chose, Earth made the Base, the Treble Fame arose,”

Hope! fortune’s cheating lottery; when for one prize an hundred blanks there be!

To-day is ours; what do we fear? To-day is ours; we have it here. Let’s treat it kindly, that it may Wish, at least, with us to stay.

Ah! Wretched and too solitary he who loves not his own company.

As for being much known by sight, and pointed out, I cannot comprehend the honor that lies withal; whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor.

The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government

I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature.

Nature waits upon thee still, And thy verdant cup does fill; ‘Tis fill’d wherever thou dost tread, Nature’s self’s thy Ganymede.

Beauty, thou wild fantastic ape Who dost in every country change thy shape!

When Harvey’s violent passion she did see, Began to tremble and to flee; Took sanctuary, like Daphne, in a tree

Fill the bowl with rosy wine, around our temples roses twine, And let us cheerfully awhile, like wine and roses, smile.

God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.

The world’s a scene of changes.

And I myself a Catholic will be, So far at least, great saint, to pray to thee. Hail, Bard triumphant! and some care bestow On us, the Poets militant below.

Life for delays and doubts no time does give, None ever yet made haste enough to live.

Thus would I double my life’s fading space;For he that runs it well, runs twice his race.

Man is too near all kinds of beasts,–a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture.

Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the individual and society.