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To endeavour to work upon the vulgar with fine sense, is like attempting to hew blocks with a razor.
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Thou Great First Cause, least understood Who all my sense confined To know but this, that Thou art good And that myself am blind.
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When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings.
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It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow necked bottles: the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring it out.
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Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey, Dost sometimes counsel take — and sometimes tea.
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Not louder shrieks to pitying heav'n are cast, When husbands, or when lapdogs, breathe their last.
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For he lives twice who can at once employ The present well, and e'en the past enjoy.
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Therefore they who say our thoughts are not our own because they resemble the Ancients, may as well say our faces are not our own, because they are like our Fathers: And indeed it is very unreasonable, that people should expect us to be Scholars, and yet be angry to find us so.
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The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.
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I am his Highness' dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
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What dire offence from amorous causes springs, What mighty contests rise from trivial things!
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Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; Thus unlamented let me die; Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie.
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Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
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Good God! how often are we to die before we go quite off this stage? in every friend we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part.
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And binding Nature fast in fate, Left free the human will.
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Let such, such only tread this sacred floor, Who dare to love their country and be poor.
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I find myself just in the same situation of mind you describe as your own, heartily wishing the good, that is the quiet of my country, and hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.
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Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes; The glorious fault of Angels and of Gods.
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Let spades be trumps! she said, and trumps they were.
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Father of all! in every age, In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!
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For, as blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
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Happy the man whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air In his own ground.
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They dream in Courtship, but in Wedlock wake.
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Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies, And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.