“Let Fortune empty her whole quiver on me, I have a soul that, like an ample shield, Can take in all, and verge enough for more; Fate was not mine, nor am I Fate’s: Souls know no conquerors.”

Self-defense is Nature’s eldest law.

Him of the western dome, whose weighty sense Flows in fit words and heavenly eloquence.

So the false spider, when her nets are spread, deep ambushed in her silent den does lie.

Thus, while the mute creation downward bend Their sight, and to their earthly mother ten, Man looks aloft; and with erected eyes Beholds his own hereditary skies.

But Shakespeare’s magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he.

No government has ever been, or can ever be, wherein time-servers and blockheads will not be uppermost.

Every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous, nay, sometimes nonsense, in another.

I am as free as nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

If passion rules, how weak does reason prove!

So softly death succeeded life in her, She did but dream of heaven, and she was there.

Fool that I was, upon my eagle’s wings I bore this wren, till I was tired with soaring, and now he mounts above me.

Death ends our woes, and the kind grave shuts up the mournful scene.

He who would search for pearls must dive below.

But love’s a malady without a cure.

We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.

I am resolved to grow fat and look young till forty, and then slip out of the world with the first wrinkle and the reputation of five-and-twenty.