The Quintessence of English Poetry, Or, a Collection of All the Beautiful Passages in Our Poems and Plays, from the Celebrated Spencer to 1688 ...

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Olive Payne, 1740
 

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Page 170 - Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind; And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
Page 19 - To the tent-royal of their ( emperor; Who, busied in his majesty, surveys The singing masons building roofs of gold, The civil citizens kneading up the honey, The poor mechanic porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate, The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum, Delivering o'er to executors pale The lazy yawning drone.
Page 164 - The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together : our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.
Page 109 - If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions : I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.
Page 276 - Put out the light, and then put out the light. If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me; but once put out thy light, Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume.
Page 76 - Nor from mine own weak merits will I draw The smallest fear or doubt of her revolt ; For she had eyes, and chose me. No, lago ; I'll see before I doubt ; when I doubt, prove ; And on the proof, there is no more but this, — Away at once with love or jealousy ! lago.
Page 236 - Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there, And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven!
Page 73 - What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and god-like reason To fust in us unus'd.
Page 149 - We must not make a scare-crow of the law, ' Setting it up to fear the birds of prey, And let it keep one shape, till custom make it Their perch, and not their terror.
Page 276 - For in my way it lies. Stars hide your fires ! Let not light see my black and deep desires : The eye wink at the hand ! yet let that be, Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

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