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And yet run'st toward him still: Thou art not noble; For all the accommodations that thou bear'st

Are nursed by baseness: Thou art by no means valiant;

For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm: Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'st.

Thou art not thyself;
For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains
That issue out of dust: Happy thou art not:
For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get;
And what thou hast, forget'st: Thou art not certain;
For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,t
After the moon: If thou art rich, thou art poor;
For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,
And Death unloads thee: Friends hast thou none;
For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire,
The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

Do curse the gout, serpigo," and the rheum,
For ending thee no sooner: Thou hast nor youth,

nor age;

But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,

Dreaming on both: for all thy blessed youth
Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palsied eld; and when thou art old, and rich,
Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
To make thy riches pleasant. Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear.

334

Intemperance, the evil of it.

Boundless intemperance

In nature is a tyranny; it hath been

Th' untimely emptying of the happy throne,
And fall of many kings.

335

Avarice.

How quickly nature falls into revolt,

When gold becomes her object!

For this, the foolish over-careful fathers

5-iii. 1.

15-iv. 3.

Have broke their sleep with thoughts, their brains

Their bones with industry:

Affects, affections. " Leprous eruptions.

[with care,

▾ Old age.

For this, they have engross'd and piled up
The canker'd heaps of strange-achieved gold;
For this, they have been thoughtful to invest
Their sons with arts, and martial exercises:
When, like the bee, tolling" from every flower
The virtuous sweets;

Our thighs pack'd with wax, our mouths with honey,
We bring it to the hive; and, like the bees,
Are murder'd for our pains.

19-iv. 4:

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How sour sweet music is,

When time is broke, and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.

337

Cowardice. Courage.

17-v. 5.

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.

338

Jests misplaced may be fatal.

His jest will savour but of shallow wit,

29-ii. 2.

When thousands weep, more than did laugh at it.

339

Simplicity in pleasing.

20-i. 2.

That sport best pleases, that doth least know how:
Where zeal strives to content, and the contents
Die in the zeal of them which it presents,
Their form confounded makes most form in mirth;
When great things labouring perish in their birth.

340

8-v. 2.

Satiety.

The cloy'd will,

(That satiate yet unsatisfied desire,

That tub both fill'd and running,) ravening first
The lamb, longs after for the garbage.

31-i. 7.

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342

343

Brevity of life.

Some, how brief the life of man
Runs his erring pilgrimage;
That the stretching of a span
Buckles in his sum of age.

Infatuation.

Let the superfluous, and lust-dieted man,

10-iii. 2.

That slaves your ordinance, that will not see Because he doth not feel, feel your power quickly; So distribution should undo excess,

And each man have enough.

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Sometimes we are devils to ourselves,

34-iv. 1.

When we shall tempt the frailty of our powers,
Presuming on their changeful potency.

26-iv. 4.

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Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain,
Which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain.

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Violent fires soon burn out themselves:

8-i. 1.

Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short; He tires betimes, that spurs too fast betimes;

With eager feeding, food doth choke the feeder:

Light Vanity, insatiate cormorant,

Consuming means, soon preys upon itself. 17-ii. 1.

348

Youth and Age distinguished.

Youth no less becomes The light and careless livery that it wears, Than settled age his sables, and his weeds, Importing health and graveness."

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a

36-iv. 7.

young man regards show in dress; an old man, health.

349

Love elevates and refines.

Base men, being in love, have then a nobility in their natures more than is native to them.

350

The most promising hopes often blasted.

As in the sweetest bud

The eating canker dwells, so eating love
Inhabits in the finest wits of all.

As the most forward bud
Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,
Even so by love the young and tender wit
Is turn'd to folly; blasting in the bud,
Losing his verdure even in the prime,
And all the fair effects of future hopes.

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37-ii. 1.

'Tis not the many oaths, that make the truth; But the plain single vow, that is vow'd true. What is not holy, that we swear not by,

But take the Highest to witness."

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The silence often of pure innocence
Persuades, when speaking fails.

: 353

Delusion of imagination.

O, who can hold a fire in his hand,
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus ?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite,
By bare imagination of a feast?

Or wallow naked in December snow,
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?
O, no! the apprehension of the good,
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse:
Fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more,
Than when it bites, but lanceth not the sore.

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This is the very ecstasy of love,

Whose violent property foredoes itself,

2-i. 1.

11-iv. 2.

13-ii. 2.

17-i. 3.

b The sense is, we never swear by what is not holy, but take to witness the Highest---the Divinity.

c Destroys.

And leads the will to desperate undertakings,
As oft as any passion under heaven,

That does afflict our natures.

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To be furious,

36-ii. 1.

Is, to be frighted out of fear: and, in that mood,
The dove will peck the estridge:

When valour preys on reason,

It eats the sword it fights with.

356

Excess of grief and joy.

30-iii. 11.

The violence of either grief or joy
Their own enactures with themselves destroy:
Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament
Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.

357

Mental power.

t;

36-iii. 2.

Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass,
Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron,
Can be retentive to the strength of spirit.

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29-i. 3.

The harlot's cheek, beautied with plast'ring art,
Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it,
Than is my deed to my most painted word.

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Ignomy in ransom, and free pardon,
Are of two houses: lawful mercy is
Nothing akin to foul redemption.

360

Affliction, most felt by contrast.

To be worst,

36-iii. 1.

5-ii. 4.

The lowest, and most dejected thing of fortune,
Stands still in esperance; lives not in fear:
The lamentable change is from the best;
The worst returns to laughter.

d Ostrich.

34-iv. 1.

e Determinations.

That is, compared with the thing that helps it.
An ignominious ransom.

b Hope.

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