Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven, And though no science, fairly worth the seven.

I begin where most people end, with a full conviction of the emptiness of all sorts of ambition, and the unsatisfactory nature of all human pleasures.

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!

To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To raise the genius, and to mend the heart; To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold, Live o'er each Seene, and be what they behold: For this the Tragic Muse first trod the stage.

Sickness is a sort of early old age; it teaches us a diffidence in our earthly state.

Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well.

But thousands die without or this or that, Die, and endow a college or a cat.