A little learning is a dangerous thing Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
All nature is but art unknown to thee.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
Sickness is a sort of early old age it teaches us a diffidence in our earthly state.
The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave.
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.
Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
Wit is the lowest form of humor.
Never find fault with the absent.
The difference is too nice - Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.
Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.
We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow. Our wiser sons, no doubt will think us so.
A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.
In pride in reas'ning pride our error lies All quit their sphere and rush into the skies. Pride still is aiming at the bless'd abodes Men would be angels angels would be gods.
To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.
A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.
Happy the man, whose wish and careA few paternal acres bound,Content to breathe his native airIn his own ground.
Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.
Then marble soften'd into life grew warm.
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot! The world forgetting by the world forgot.