On Love:
How oft, when press’d to marriage, have I said,
Curse on all laws but those which love has made!
(From: Eloisa To Abelard)
When souls each other draw,
When love is liberty, and nature, law:
All then is full, possessing, and possess’d,
No craving void left aching in the breast:
Ev’n thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part,
And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart.
(From: Eloisa To Abelard)
Curse on all laws, but those that love has made.
On Kindness:
Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.
On Life:
Above, how high, progressive life may go!
(From: An Essay On Man In Four Epistles: Epistle 1)
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.
The vanity of human life is like a river, constantly passing away, and yet constantly coming on.
On Happiness:
False happiness is like false money it passes for a time as well as the true, and serves some ordinary occasions but when it is brought to the touch, we find the lightness and alloy, and feel the loss.
On Learning:
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
But as the slightest Sketch, if justly trac’d,
Is by ill Colouring but the more disgrac’d,
So by false Learning is good Sense defac’d.
(From: An Essay On Criticism)
Learning is like mercury, one of the most powerful and excellent things in the world in skillful hands in unskillful, the most mischievous.
On Knowledge:
That true self-love and social are the same That virtue only makes our bliss below And all our knowledge is, ourselves to know.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain And drinking largely sobers us again.
On God:
What blessings thy free bounty gives
Let me not cast away;
For God is paid when man receives;
T’ enjoy is to obey.
(From: Universal Prayer)
On Religion:
Genuine religion is not so much a matter of feeling as a matter of principle.