Love, Hope, and Joy, fair pleasure's smiling train, Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of pain, These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd Make and maintain the balance of the mind.
Fortune in men has some small diff'rence made,
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade,
The cobbler apron'd, and the parson gown'd,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crown'd.
Persons of genius, and those who are most capable of art, are always most fond of nature: as such are chiefly sensible, that all art consists in the imitation and study of nature.
A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink of it deeply, or taste it not, for shallow thoughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking deeply sobers us again.
Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please, With too much spirit to be e'er at ease, With too much quickness ever to be taught, With too much thinking to have common thought: You purchase pain with all that joy can give, And die of nothing but a rage to live.