HONESTY.

RICH honesty

Dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house;

As your pearl in your foul oyster.

As You Like It.

CLEAR and round dealing is the honour of man's nature, and mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it: for these windings and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent; which goeth basely upon the belly and not on the feet.

BACON.

Queen Eliz. AN honest tale speeds best being plainly told. Richard III.

BEAUTY.

A BEAUTIFUL face is a silent commendation.

BEAUTY, tho' injurious, hath strange power,
After offence returning, to regain
Love once possessed,* nor can be easily
Repulsed, without much inward passion felt,
And secret sting of amorous remorse.

BEAUTY is but a vain and doubtful good, †
A shining gloss, that fadeth suddenly;
A flower that dies when first it 'gins to bud,
A brittle glass, that's broken presently:
A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,
Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.

MILTON.

SHAKSPEARE,

POOR as it is, this beauty was the cause
That with first sighs your panting bosom rose :
But with no owner beauty long will stay,

Upon the wings of time borne swift away.

Pass but some fleeting years, and these poor eyes

*If to her share some female errors fall,

Look in her face and you'll forget them all.

POPE. Rape of the Lock.

+ Beauty is like summer fruit, easily corrupted and not lasting. It often renders Youth dissolute and Age penitent; but if well placed makes Virtues shine, and Vices blush.

BACON. Essays.

(Where now without a boast some lustre lies)
No longer shall their little honours keep,
Shall only be of use to read or weep;

And on this forehead where your verse has said
The Loves delighted and the Graces play'd,
Insulting Age shall trace his cruel way,
And leave sad marks of his destructive sway.
PRIOR. Miscellanies.

TRUST not, sweet soul, those curl'd waves of gold
With gentle tides that on your temples flow,
Nor temples spread with flakes of virgin snow,
Nor snow of cheeks with Tyrian grain enroll'd;
Trust nor those shining lights which wrought my woe,
When first I did their azure rays behold,

Nor voice, whose sounds more strange effects do show
Than of the Thracian harper have been told.
Look to the dying lily, fading rose,

Dark hyacinth, of late whose blushing beams
Made all the neighbouring herbs and grass rejoice,
And think how little is 'twixt life's extremes;

The cruel tyrant that did kill those flow'rs,
Shall once, ah me! not spare that spring of yours.

AH! yet doth beauty, like a dial hand,
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived;

DRUMMOND.

So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand,
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived.

SHAKSPEARE. Sonnets.

DIFFIDENCE and presumption upon account of our persons, are equally faults, and both arise from the want of knowing or rather endeavouring to know ourselves and for what we ought to be valued or neglected.

Spectator, No. 87.

WHAT'S female beauty, but an air divine,
Thro' which the mind's all gentle graces shine?
They, like the sun, irradiate all between ;
The body chains, because the soul is seen.
Hence, men are often captives of a face,
They know not why, of no peculiar grace:

* Liking is not always the child of beauty; but whatsoever is liked, to the liker is beautiful.

Sir P. SIDNEY.

Some forms, tho' bright, no mortal man can bear;
Some, none resist, tho' not exceeding fair.

To Ianthe.

YOUNG.

Nor in those climes where I have late been straying,
Though beauty long hath there been matchless deem'd,
Not in those visions to the heart displaying

Forms which it sighs but to have only dream'd,

Hath aught like thee in truth or fancy seem'd:

Nor having seen thee, shall I vainly seek

To paint those charms which varied as they beam'd;
To such as see thee not my words were weak,

To those who gaze on thee what language could they speak.
BYRON. Childe Harold.

AN outward gift which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

GIBBON. Decline and Fall, Chap. 50.

As it is an argument of a light mind to think the worse of ourselves for the imperfections of our persons, it is equally below us to value ourselves upon the advantages of them.

GIVE me instead of Beauty's bust,

A tender heart, a loyal mind,

Spectator, No. 53.

Which with temptation I would trust,
Yet never link'd with error find.

One in whose gentle bosom I
Could hide my secret heart of woes,
Like the care-burthen'd honey-fly
That hides his murmurs in the rose.

My earthly comforter! whose love
So indefeasible might be,

That when my spirit wonn'd above,
Hers could not stay, for sympathy.

ANON.

HASTE.

IN desire, expedition itself is delay.

SIR AMYAS PAWLET, when he saw too much haste made in any matter, used to say, Stay a while, that we may make an end the

sooner.

Now there is nothing gives a man such spirits
Leavening his blood as cayenne doth a curry,
As going at full speed-no matter where its
Direction be, so 'tis but in a hurry,

And merely for the sake of its own merits;

For the less cause there is for all this flurry,
The greater is the pleasure in arriving

At the great end of travel—which is driving.

DESPATCH.

Don Juan, Canto 10.

To choose time is to save time; and an unseasonable motion is but beating the air. There be three parts of business: the preparation; the debate or examination; and the perfection; whereof, if you look for despatch, let the middle only be the work of many, and the first and last the work of few.

BACON.

DEAFNESS.

SHE was deaf as a stone—say one of the stones
Demosthenes suck'd to improve his tones,

And surely deafness no further could reach

Than to be in his mouth without hearing his speech!

For what can be a greater privation
Than playing dummy to all creation,
And only looking at conversation.

There was Mrs. F.,
So very deaf,

That she might have worn a percussion-cap,

And been knocked on the head without hearing it snap;
Well, I sold her a horn, and the very next day,

She heard from her husband at Botany Bay!

HOOD. Tale of a Trumpet.

It is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal.

(Falstaff to the Lord Chief Justice.) Henry IV., Second Part.

FOOLS.

Clown. WELL, God give them wisdom that have it ;

And those that are fools, let them use their talents.

Twelfth Night.

Viola. I saw thee late at the Count Orsino's.

Clown. Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb; like the sun, it shines everywhere. I would be sorry, sir, but the fool should be as oft with your master as with my mistress: I think I saw your wisdom there.

Twelfth Night, Act III.

Jacques. O WORTHY fool!—one that has been a courtier ;

And says, if ladies be but young and fair,

They have the gift to know it: and in his brain,
Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit

After a voyage,—he hath strange places cramm'd
With observation, the which he vents

In mangled forms :-0, that I were a fool!

I am ambitious for a motley coat.

As You Like It, Act II.

To succeed in the world it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discover who is a fool than to discover who is a clever man."

*

WHY will mankind be fools, and be deceived?
And why are friends' and lovers' oaths believed?
When each, who searches strictly his own mind
May so much fraud and power of baseness find?

CONGREVE.

He must be a thorough fool who can learn nothing from his own folly.

HARE. Guesses at Truth.

I LOOK upon them not as paying visits but visitations.

FITZOSBORNE. Letters.

*This aphorism is Cato's, who said—

That wise men learn'd more by fools
Than fools by wise men.