Thus happiness depends, as nature shows, less on exterior things than most suppose.
Far happier are the dead methinks than they who look for death and fear it every day.
Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appear'd, And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard: To carry nature lengths unknown before, To give a Milton birth, ask'd ages more.
Built God a church and laughed His word to scorn.
Accomplishments have taken virtue's place, and wisdom falls before exterior grace.
The man that hails you Tom or Jack, and proves by thumps upon your back how he esteems your merit, is such a friend, that one had need be very much his friend indeed to pardon or to bear it.