Than the soft myrtle !-O, but man, proud man !
Drest in a little brief authority-

Most ignorant of what he's most assured,

His glassy essence, like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,

As make the angels weep.

5-ii. 2.

You are above,

You justicers, that these our nether crimes
So speedily can venge!

That comfort comes too late;

'Tis like a pardon after execution:

34-iv. 2.

That gentle physic, given in time, had cured me;

But now I am past all comforts here, but prayers.

76

25-iv. 2.

Things to be valued by their worth.

From the lowest place when virtuous things proceed, The place is dignified by the doer's deed:

Where great additions* swell, and virtue none,

It is a dropsied honour: good alone

Is good, without a name; vileness is so:†

The property by what it is should go,

Not by the title.

We must not stint‡

11-ii. 3.

Our necessary actions, in the fear

To copes malicious censurers; which ever,

As ravenous fishes, do a vessel follow,

That is new trimm'd; but benefit no farther

Than vainly longing.

78

25-i. 2.

Judgment of weak minds not to be regarded.

What we oft do best,
By sick interpreters, once || weak ones, is
Not ours, or not allow'd; what worst, as oft,

Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile :*

Filths savour but themselves.

Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg;

In the fatness of these pursy times,

25-i. 2.

34-iv. 2.

Yea, curbt and woo, for leave to do him good.

36-iii. 4.

O wicked wit, and gifts, that have the power

36-i. 5.

27-i. 2.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall:
Some run from brakes of vice, and answer none;

And some condemned for a fault alone.

5-ii. 1.

The devil knew not what he did, when he made man politic; he crossed himself by't: and I cannot think, but, in the end, the villanies of man will set

Ingrateful man, with liquorish draughts,

27-iii. 3.

And morsels unctuous, greases his pure mind,

That from it all consideration slips.

86

Mental deformity and virtue.

27-iv. 3.

In nature there's no blemish, but the mind;
None can be call'd deform'd, but the unkind:

Virtue is beauty; but the beauteous-evil
Are empty trunks,* o'erflourished by the devil.

87

Virtue and Vice, their influence.

Virtue, as it never will be moved,

4-iii. 4.

Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven;

So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd,

Will sate itself in a celestial bed,

And prey on garbage.

36-i. 5.

'Tis too much proved, -that, with devotion's visage,

And pious action, we do sugar o'er

The devil himself.

89

36-iii. 4.

Age provident. Youth heedless,

It seems, it is as proper to our age

To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions,

As it is common for the younger sort

To lack discretion.

90

36-ii. 1.

Instability of worldly glory.

Like madness is the glory of this life,

As this pomp shows to a little oil, and root.||

We make ourselves fools, to disport ourselves;

And spend our flatteries, to drink those men,

With poisonous spite and envy.

Upon whose age we void it up again

27-i. 2.

Mankind, its general character.

91

Who lives, that's not

Depraved, or depraves? who dies, that bears
Not one spurn to their graves of their friend's gift?

92

Interposition.

'Tis dangerous, when the baser nature comes

27-i. 2. 36-v. 2.

Between the pass and fell incensed points
Of mighty opposites.

Time shall unfold what plaited* cunning hides,
Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.t

34-i. 1.

94

Obstinacy, its evil.

To persist

26-ii. 2.

In doing wrong, extenuates not wrong,

But makes it much more heavy.

What rein can hold licentious wickedness,

When down the hill he holds his fierce career?

96

Filial rebellion.

20-iii. 3.

That nature which contemns its origin,

Cannot be border'd certain in itself;

She, that herself will sliver and disbranch

From her material sap, perforce must wither,

And come to deadly use.

34-iv. 2.

Dangerous conceits are, in their natures, poisons,
Which, at the first, are scarce found to distaste;

But with a little act upon the blood,

Burn like the mines of sulphur.

Men shall deal unadvisedly sometimes,

Which after-hours give leisure to repent.

37-iii. 3.

24-iv. 4.

Where's that palace, whereinto foul things Sometimes intrude not? who has a breast so pure,

But some uncleanly apprehensions

Keep leets, and law-days, and in session sit
With meditations lawful?†

100

Timidity and self-confidence.

37-iii. 3.

Blind Fear, that seeing Reason leads, finds safer

footing than blind Reason stumbling without Fear.

101

Judgment influenced by circumstances.

Men's judgments are

26-iii. 2.

A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward

Do draw the inward quality after them,

30-iii. 11.

Gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite

To suffer all alike.

The man that mocks at it, and sets it light.

17-i. 3.

103

Cold comfort.

Cold ways,

Where the disease is violent.

28-iii. 1.

104

That seem like prudent helps, are very poisonous

Knowledge to be communicated.

That man-how dearly ever parted,||

How much in having, or without, or in,-
Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,

Nor feels not what he owes, but by reflection;
As when his virtues shining upon others
Heat them, and they retort that heat again
To the first giver.

105

The same.

26-iii. 3.

The beauty that is borne here in the face,
The bearer knows not, but commends itself
To others' eyes; nor doth the eye itself
(That most pure spirit of sense) behold itself,
Not going from itself; but eye to eye opposed