Memoirs of sir William Knighton, bart. Including his correspondence, Volume 1

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Page 280 - You taught me language; and my profit on't Is, I know how to curse : The red plague rid you, For learning me your language ! Pro.
Page 34 - I prized every hour that went by, Beyond all that had pleased me before ; But now they are past, and I sigh, And I grieve that I prized them no more.
Page 43 - Parent of nature ! Master of the world ! Where'er thy Providence directs, behold My steps with cheerful resignation turn. Fate leads the willing, drags the backward on. Why should I grieve, when grieving I must bear ? Or take with guilt, what guiltless I might share ? Thus let us speak, and thus let us act.
Page 26 - I sit with sad civility, I read With honest anguish and an aching head; And drop at last, but in unwilling ears, This saving counsel,
Page 65 - If it is our behaviour and address upon all occasions that prejudice people in oUr favour, or to our disadvantage, and the more substantial parts, as our learning and industry, cannot possibly appear but to few, it. is not justifiable to spend so much time in that which so very few are judges of, and utterly neglect that which falls within the censure of so many.
Page 13 - Wisdom is a right understanding, a faculty of discerning good from evil; what is to be chosen, and what rejected; a judgment grounded upon the value of things, and not the common opinion of them; an equality of force, and a strength of resolution. It sets a watch over our words and deeds, it takes us up with the contemplation of the works of nature, and makes us invincible by either good or evil fortune.
Page 32 - Knowledge is certainly one of the means of pleasure, as is confessed by the natural desire which every mind feels of increasing its ideas. Ignorance is mere privation, by which nothing can be produced: it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction ; and without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn, and grieve when we forget. I am therefore inclined to conclude, that if nothing counteracts the natural...
Page 27 - No names — be calm — learn prudence of a friend : I too could write, and I am twice as tall ; But foes like these — P. One flatterer's worse than all. Of all mad creatures, if the learn'd are right, It is" the slaver kills, and not the bite.
Page 247 - Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethereal Stream, Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the Sun, Before the Heavens, thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle didst invest 10 The rising World of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless Infinite...
Page 247 - Of God, as with a mantle didst invest The rising world of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless infinite. Thee I revisit now with bolder wing...

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