In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends, While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us.

And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together."

Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices, so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.

She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.

How we apples swim.

There's none so blind as they that won't see.

There's none so blind as they that won't see.

Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches to conceive how others can be in want.

Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives.

Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.

I warrant you lay abed till the cows came home.

Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer; I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.

They say fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives.

Bread is the staff of life.

Never sleeping, still awake, Pleasing most when most I speak; The delight of old and young, Though I speak without a tongue. Nought but one thing can confound me, Many voices joining round me, Then I fret, and rave, and gabble, Like the labourers of Babel.

'Tis an old maxim in the schools, That flattery's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.

Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.

So, naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum. Thus every poet in his kind Is bit by him that comes behind.

When a true genius appears in this world you may know him by the sign that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.