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

Acquaintance I would have, but when it depends; not on number, but the choice of friends.

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

Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vitae of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun.

Absurdly improbable things are quite as liable to happen in real life as in weak literature.

People were not charmed with Eglantine because she herself was charming, but because she was charmed.

It’s a divine art to be cheerful.

I confess I love littleness almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a little feast.

Be cheerful, if you are wise.

The game of life looks cheerful when one carries a treasure safe in his heart.

The cheerful loser is a sort of winner.