“What a brave privilege is it to be free from all contentions, from all envying or being envied, from receiving or paying all kinds of ceremonies!”

Coy Nature, (which remain’d, though aged grown, A beauteous virgin still, enjoy’d by none, Nor seen unveil’d by anyone),

There is some help for all the defects of fortune; for, if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter.

What shall I do to be for ever known, And make the age to come my own?

I would not fear nor wish my fate, but boldly say each night, to-morrow let my sun his beams display, or in clouds hide them; I have lived today.

This only grant me, that my means may lie, too low for envy, for contempt to high.

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

The monster London laugh at me.

Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise, He who defers this work from day to day, Does on a river’s bank expecting stay

Sleep is a god too proud to wait in palaces, and yet so humble too as not to scorn the meanest country cottages.

Life is an incurable disease.

But what is woman? Only one of nature’s agreeable blunders.

:Though so exalted sheAnd I so lowly beTell her, such different notes make all thy harmony.

The present is all the ready money Fate can give.

A mighty pain to love it is, And ’tis a pain that pain to miss; But, of all pains, the greatest pain Is to love, but love in vain.

Nothing so soon the drooping spirits can raise As praises from the men, whom all men praise.

The Sunflow’r, thinking ’twas for him foul shame To nap by daylight, strove t’ excuse the blame

The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.

Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.

I’ve always envied the kind of coach who could go completely out of his mind and nobody would know the difference.