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What then remained for later writers, but affectation, witticism, and conceit?

What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a God!

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. He is a good

divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching.

Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.

The sense of death is most in apprehension; and the poor beetle that we tread upon,

In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great,
As when a giant dies.

From Enfield's Speaker

MAXIMS.

PROEM.

Just as the bee collects her sweets,
From every flower and shrub she meets,
So what from various books I drew,
I give though not the whole as new.
I would not, like the fabled bird,
Carelessly wanton and absurd,
In borrowed plumage strut about,
To be the sport of every lout.
It is not vainly my design

To publish others' thoughts as mine;
Amply rewarded for my pains.
So my collection entertains.
The dross may easily be known

From the rich metal, not my own.

OUR passions are rebels against our understandings.

The soil, however rich, nevertheless has need of the hand of the labourer.

A florid speech, without matter, is like a drum, noisy, but empty.

Thinking is the key to the tongue.

Wine, like a coward, attacks us most when we are least upon our guard.

Prosperity has the qualities of the waters of Lethe; they who taste of it forget themselves.

The actions of men are like the index of a book; they point out what is most remarkable in them. To flatter a good man is needless; a bad one, an insult.

Nobility, like great rivers, has often an obscure rigin.

Nobility, instead of giving a lustre to posterity, frequently obscures it; as a very bright sun produces a deeper and stronger shadow.

Learning is to the mind what dress is to the body; useful and ornamental.

Pedantry is the foppery of learning, as fringe and embroidery are of dress.

A king's best guard is the love of his people.

That kings can do no wrong, is a mischievous maxim in policy: good kings never will; and bad ones should never dare to subvert the laws of their country.

The men who have been dignified with the title of great, were those who were the greatest-destroyers of mankind; Alexander the Great, and Lewis the Great, are examples.

It is amazing that men should affect to know every thing, and yet be so deficient in the very first principle of wisdom-know thyself.

Experience and observation are the light-houses of reason, which direct us in our steerage through the dangerous ocean of life.

Those who make constant use of horses and asses, will find they have seldom occasion for the physician:

Exercise and proper diet

Keep the mind and body quiet.

Kings have long arms; they should have short memories.

Ingratitude is a poison of so deleterious a nature, that it even destroys the very bosom in which it harbours.

Men in love are like children whining after a VOL VI.

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plaything; which, when once they have been indulged with, they throw aside, and, perhaps, take up with a less agreeable and more trifling toy.

A noble mansion with an avaricious owner, is like a very fine binding to an ill-written book; you must not expect to meet with good entertainment within.

Riches and care are as inseparable as sun and shadow.

It is not Fortune, but we, that are blind: for, with content, a little will satisfy the purposes of life; without it, thousands are insufficient.

Good kings want no guards, and bad ones fear them.

Physicians, when they lose sight of Nature, recommend a consultation; as men, bewildered in the dark, call out for light.

How happens it, that converts generally are more zealous in the defence of the religion they have embraced than their converters? It is, perhaps, that they may make up for the time they suspect they have lost, in order to be put on a par; as travellers, who, being behind, make all the speed they can to come up with their party, so that they may get in together at last.

Men are loth to die, so are children to go to bed; and, probably, for the same reason, they are afraid to be confined in the dark.

Every good man would wish to pay his just debts; and is not death a debt we owe to Nature?

It is a childish complaint to say, Time flies away from us; when the very reverse is the real truth: people sailing think the land and trees fly from

them; they are deceived, it is the ship that

moves.

It is in the power of every man to be rich, provided he will be content.

Ease and peace of mind lengthen life.

A man is very unfit to live in the world who cannot keep his temper, his secrets, and his money.

There is nothing in nature so bold as innocence, nor so timid as guilt.

To combat with, and to surmount difficulties, is the greatest triumph.

The study of the mathematics is like climbing up a steep and craggy mountain; when once you reach the top, it fully recompenses your trouble, by opening a fine, clear, and extensive prospect.

Highwaymen and gamblers differ only in their modes of depredation: the former attack you, under masks, with loaded pistols; while the latter accost you, in lace and embroidery, with packs of cards and loaded dice.

Avarice and dissipation are like Scylla and Charybdis; they engulf every thing that comes within their vortex.

Fashion is the daughter of Folly, begot upon Vanity.

Virtue in women, like courage in men, is a security against the impertinence of insult.

Procrastination is inexcusable folly; to morrow will bring business of its own.

Love, like wine, has an intoxicating quality, and renders us insensible of every other object about us, if too largely indulged: like wine, too,

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