“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.”

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

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.