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And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly,
Grasps-in the comer: welcome ever smiles,

And farewell goes out sighing. O let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was;

For beauty, wit,

High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all

To envious and calumniating Time.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,—
That all, with one consent, praise new-born gawds,
Though they are made and moulded of things past;
And give to dust, that is a little gilt,

More laud than gilt o'erdusted.

The present eye praises the present object :

Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,
That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;
Since things in motion sooner catch the eye,
Than what not stirs.

Troilus and Cressida, Act III.

ON A GIRDLE.

THAT which her slender waist confined
Shall now my joyful temples bind:
No monarch but would give his crown
His arms might do what this has done.
It was my heaven's extremest sphere,
The pale which held that lovely deer:
My joy, my grief, my hope, my love,
Did all within this circle move.

A narrow compass! and yet there
Dwelt all that's good, and all that's fair:
Give me but what this ribbon bound,
Take all the rest the Sun goes round.

SLANDER.

WALLER.

In all cases of slander currency, whenever the forger of the lie is not to be found, the injured parties should have a right to come on any of the indorsers.

SHERIDAN. School for Scandal.

THE worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as we usually find that to be the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.

No, 'tis slander;

Whose edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue
Outvenoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath
Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie

All corners of the world: kings, queens, and states,
Maids, matrons-nay, the secrets of the grave,
This viperous slander enters.

FOR slander lives upon succession: *

Cymbeline, Act III.

For ever housed, where it once gets possession.
Comedy of Errors, Act III.

FORTUNE.

INDUSTRY is fortune's right hand, and frugality her left.

THE power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the happy impute all their success to prudence and merit.

AH me! what perils do environ
The man that meddles with cold iron.

SWIFT.

*

For though dame Fortune seem to smile
And leer upon him for a while,
She'll after show him, in the nick
Of all his glories, a dog trick.

*

Found in few minutes, to his cost,
He did but count without his host;
And that a turn-stile is more certain
Than, in events of war, dame Fortune.

Hudibras, Part I., Chap. 3.

MAN is supreme lord and master
Of his own ruin and disaster;
Controls his fate, but nothing less
In ord'ring his own happiness:

* Men's evil manners live in brass: their virtues
We write in water.

The evil that men do lives after them:
The good is oft interred with their bones.

Henry VIII.

Julius Cæsar.

For all his care and providence
Is too, too feeble a defence

To render it secure and certain
Against the injuries of fortune;
And oft, in spite of all his wit,
Is lost with one unlucky hit,
And ruin'd with a circumstance,
And mere punctilio of chance.

BUTLER. Miscellaneous Thoughts.

HE is not dead that sometime had a fall!

The sun returns, that hid was under cloud,
And when dame Fortune hath spit all her gall,
I trust good luck to me shall be allow'd:

For I have seen a ship in haven fall,

After the storm had broke both mast and shroud.
The willow eke, that stoopeth with the wind,
Doth rise again, and greater wood doth bind.
SIR THOMAS WYATT

MERCY.

Portia. THE quality of mercy is not strain'd;
It droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless'd;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes:
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But
is above this sceptred sway:
mercy
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,-
That in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

Merchant of Venice, Act IV.

FOR laws that are inanimate,
And feel no sense of love or hate,

That have no passion of their own,
Nor pity to be wrought upon,
Are only proper to inflict
Revenge on criminals as strict:
But to have power to forgive,
Is empire and prerogative;
And 'tis in crowns a nobler gem

To grant a pardon than condemn.

Hudibras to his Lady.

WHEN Tom, an' please your honour, got to the shop, there was nobody in it but a poor negro girl, with a bunch of white feathers, slightly tied to the end of a long cane, flapping away flies, not killing them.

'Tis a pretty picture, said my Uncle Toby; she had suffered persecution, Trim, and had learned mercy."

STERNE. Tristram Shandy.

JUSTICE.

JUSTICE gives sentence many times
On one man for another's crimes.

Hudibras, Part II., Canto 2.

THERE, in a winding close retreat
Is Justice doom'd to fix her seat;
There, fenced by bulwarks of the law,
She keeps the wond'ring world in awe;
And there, from vulgar sight retired,
Like Eastern queens is more admired.

SIR W. BLACKSTONE.

The Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse.

HYPOCRISY.

HYPOCRISY is a homage which vice renders to virtue.†

ROCHEFOUCAULD.

*Pity best taught by fellowship of woe.

COLERIDGE.

+ Hypocrisy itself does great honour, or rather justice, to religion, and tacitly acknowledges it to be an ornament to human nature. The hypocrite would not be at so much pains to put on the appearance of virtue if he did not know it was the most proper and effectual means to gain the love and esteem of mankind.

ADDISON.

F

PURITANICAL HYPOCRISY.

O, BUT to such whose faces are all zeal,*

And, (with the words of Hercules) invade
Such crimes as these! that will not smell of sin,
But seem as they were made of sanctity!
Religion in their garments, and their hair

Cut shorter than their eyebrows! when the conscience
Is vaster than the ocean, and devours

More wretches than the counters.

BEN JONSON. Every Man out of his Humour.

WHY didst thou chuse that cursed sin,
Hypocrisy, to set up in ?

Because it is the thriving'st calling,
The only saints-bell that rings all in;
In which all churches are concern'd,
And is the easiest to be learn'd;
For no degrees, unless th' employ't,
Can ever gain much, or enjoy't;
A gift that is not only able
To domineer among the rabble,
But by the laws impowr'd to rout,

And awe the greatest that stand out;
Which few hold forth against, for fear
Their hands should slip and come too near,
For no sin else among the Saints

Is taught so tenderly against.

Hudibras, Part III., Canto 1.

NOTHING is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practise; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others those attempts which he neglects himself.

JOE hates a hypocrite, and shows
That self-love is no fault of Joe's.

JOHNSON.

* Especially that have the grace
Of self-denying, gifted face.

Hudibras.

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