It is a madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because in herself she is nothing, can rule nothing, but is ruled by prudence.

…So when the last and dreadful hour This crumbling pageant shall devour, The trumpet shall be heard on high, The dead shall live, the living die, And Music shall untune the sky

Or hast thou known the world so long in vain?

A thing well said will be wit in all languages.

Good sense and good-nature are never separated, though the ignorant world has thought otherwise. Good-nature, by which I mean beneficence and candor, is the product of right reason.

God never made his work for man to mend.

Mere poets are sottish as mere drunkards are, who live in a continual mist, without seeing or judging anything clearly. A man should be learned in several sciences, and should have a reasonable, philosophical and in some measure a mathematical head, to be a complete and excellent poet.