I seem to you cruel and too much addicted to gluttony, when I beat my cook for sending up a bad dinner. If that appears to you too trifling a cause, say for what cause you would have a cook flogged.

You crystal break, for fear of breaking it: Careless and careful hands like faults commit.

While you cannot resolve what you are, at last you may be nothing.

For life is only life when blessed with health.

The swifter hand doth the swift words outrun: Before the tongue hath spoke the hand hath done.

You importune me, Tucca, to present you with my books. I shall not do so; for you want to sell, not to read, them.

You complain, friend Swift, of the length of my epigrams, but you yourself write nothing. Yours are shorter.