All pictures that's painted with sense and with thought / Are painted by madmen as sure as a groat; / For the greater the fool in the pencil more blest, / And when they are drunk they always paint best.
What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
A dog starv'd at the master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.
A horse misus'd upon the road
Calls to heaven for human blood.
Each outcry of the hunted hare
A fibre from the brain does tear,
A skylark wounded on the wing,
A cherubim does cease to sing.
In your own bosom you bear your heaven and earth,
And all you behold, though it appears without,
It is within, in your imagination,
Of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.
Commerce is so far from being beneficial to arts, or to empire, that it is destructive of both, as all their history shows, for the above reason of individual merit being its great hatred. Empires flourish till they become commercial, and then they are scattered abroad to the four winds.
The modest Rose puts forth a thorn,The humble sheep a threat'ning horn:While the Lily white shall in love delight,Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.
Since all the riches of this world
May be gifts from the Devil and earthly kings,
I should suspect that I worshipp'd the Devil
If I thank'd my God for worldly things.