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Defend me, therefore, common sense, say
From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up.
Topic: Folly
Source: Task (bk. III, l. 187)
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Exactness is the sublimity of fools.
[Fr., L'exactitude est le sublime des sots.]
Topic: Folly
Source: Task (bk. III, l. 187)
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If hindrances obstruct the way,
Thy magnanimity display.
And let thy strength be seen:
But O, if Fortune fill thy sail
With more than a propitious gale,
Take half thy canvas in.
Topic: Fortune
Source: Translation of Horace (bk. II, ode 10)
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The Frenchman, easy, debonair, and brisk,
Give him his lass, his fiddle, and his frisk,
Is always happy, reign whoever may,
And laughs the sense of mis'ry far away.
Topic: France
Source: Table Talk (l. 237)
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No, Freedom has a thousand charms to show
That slaves, howe'er contented, never know.
Topic: Freedom
Source: Table Talk (l. 260)
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He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,
And all are slaves besides.
Topic: Freedom
Source: Task (bk. V, l. 733)
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The man that hails you Tom or Jack,
And proves by thumps upon your back
How he esteems your merit,
Is such a friend, that one had need
Be very much his friend indeed
To pardon or to bear it.
Topic: Friends
Source: On Friendship (169)
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. . . glory built
On selfish principles is shame and guilt.
Topic: Glory
Source: Table Talk (l. 1)
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Glory built on selfish principles, is shame and guilt.
Topic: Glory
Source: None
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God made the country and man made the town.
Topic: God
Source: None
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That good diffused may more abundant grow.
Topic: Goodness
Source: Conversation (l. 441)
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Doing good,
Disinterested good, is not our trade.
Topic: Goodness
Source: Task (bk. I, The Sofa, l. 673)
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Whoever keeps an open ear
For tattlers will be sure to hear
The trumpet of contention.
Topic: Gossip
Source: Friendship (st. 17)
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His head,
Not yet by time completely silver'd o'er,
Bespoke him past the bounds of freakish youth,
But strong for service still, and unimpair'd.
Topic: Hair
Source: Task (bk. II, The Timepiece, l. 702)
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Thus happiness depends, as Nature shows,
Less on exterior things than most suppose.
Topic: Happiness
Source: Table Talk (l. 246)
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Domestic Happiness, thou only bliss
Of Paradise that hast survived the Fall!
Topic: Happiness
Source: Task (bk. III, l. 41)
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He who finds thought that lets us penetrate even a little deeper
into the eternal mystery of nature has been granted great grace.
He who, in addition, experiences the recognition, sympathy, and
help of the best minds of his times, had been given almost more
happiness than one man can bear.
Topic: Happiness
Source: Task (bk. III, l. 41)
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Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
Topic: Happiness
Source: Task (bk. III, l. 41)
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A hat not much worse for wear.
Topic: Hatters
Source: History of John Gilpin
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Where tempests never beat nor billows roar.
Topic: Heaven
Source: On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture
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An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path.
But he that has humanity, forewarned,
Will turn aside and let the reptile live.
Topic: Humanity
Source: Task (bk. VI)
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And prate and preach about what others prove,
As if the world and they were hand and glove.
Topic: Hypocrisy
Source: Table Talk (l. 173)
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An idler is a watch that wants both hands;
As useless if it goes as when it stands.
Topic: Idleness
Source: Retirement
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How various his employments whom the world
Calls idle; and who justly in return
Esteems that busy world an idler too!
Topic: Idleness
Source: Task (bk. III, The Garden, l. 342)
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Thus happiness depends, as nature shows, less on exterior things than most suppose.
Topic: Inspirational
Source: None
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The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
Topic: Inspirational
Source: None
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A life of ease is a difficult pursuit.
Topic: Inspirational
Source: None
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Reasoning at every step he treads, Man yet mistakes his way, Whilst meaner things, whom instinct leads, Are rarely known to stray.
Topic: Instinct
Source: None
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All learned, and all drunk!
Topic: Intemperance
Source: Task (bk. IV, l. 478)
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Gloriously drunk, obey the important call.
Topic: Intemperance
Source: Task (bk. IV, l. 510)
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Fast-anchor'd isle.
Topic: Islands
Source: Task (bk. II, The Timepiece, l. 151)
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As creeping ivy clings to wood or stone,
And hides the ruin that it feeds upon.
Topic: Ivy
Source: The Progress of Error (l. 285)
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Did Charity prevail, the press would prove
A vehicle of virtue, truth, and love.
Topic: Journalism
Source: Charity (l. 624)
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How shall I speak thee, or thy power address
Thou God of our idolatry, the Press.
. . . .
Like Eden's dead probationary tree,
Knowledge of good and evil is from thee.
Topic: Journalism
Source: Progress of Error (l. 452)
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He comes, the herald of a noisy world,
With spatter'd boots, strapp'd waist, and frozen locks;
News from all nations lumbering at his back.
Topic: Journalism
Source: Task (bk. IV, l. 5)
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When admirals extoll'd for standing still,
Of doing nothing with a deal of skill.
Topic: Labor
Source: Table Talk (l. 192)
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Here the heart
May give a useful lesson to the head,
And learning wiser grow without his books.
Topic: Learning
Source: Task (bk. VI, Winter Walk at Noon, l. 85)
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'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume;
And we are weeds without it.
Topic: Liberty
Source: Task (bk. V, l. 446)
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Then liberty, like day,
Breaks on the soul, and by a flash from Heaven
Fires all the faculties with glorious joy.
Topic: Liberty
Source: Task (bk. V, l. 882)
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. . . Philologists, who chase
A painting syllable through time and space
Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark,
To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's Ark.
Topic: Linguists
Source: Retirement (l. 691)
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Oh to have a lodge in some vast wilderness. Where rumors of oppression and deceit, of unsuccessful and successful wars may never reach me anymore.
Topic: Loneliness and Solitude
Source: None
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Our wasted oil unprofitably burns,
Like hidden lamps in old sepulchral urns.
Topic: Loss
Source: Conversation (l. 357), referring to story told by Pancirollus of lamp burned in the tomb of Tullia
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For 'tis a truth well known to most,
That whatsoever thing is lost,
We seek it, ere it comes to light,
In every cranny but the right.
Topic: Loss
Source: The Retired Cat (l. 95)
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Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts.
It's what you do with what you have left.
Topic: Loss
Source: The Retired Cat (l. 95)
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What peaceful hours I once enjoy'd!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill.
Topic: Memory
Source: Walking with God
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Mercy to him that shows it, is the rule.
Topic: Mercy
Source: Task (bk. VI, l. 595)
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Absence of occupation is not rest,
A mind quite vacant is a mind distress'd.
Topic: Mind
Source: Retirement (l. 623)
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His mind his kingdom, and his will his law.
Topic: Mind
Source: Truth (l. 405)
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How fleet is a glance of the mind!
Compared with the speed of its flight,
The tempest itself lags behind,
And the swift-winged arrows of light.
Topic: Mind
Source: Verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk
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Visitors are insatiable devourers of time, and fit only for those who, if they did not visit, would do nothing.
Topic: Miscellaneous
Source: None
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