The Good, Supreme, Divine Poetry

Custom Is A Violent And Treacherous School Mistress. She, By Little And Lithe, Slyly And Unperceived, Slips In The Foot Of Her Authority; But Having By This Gentle And Humble Beginning, With The Benefit Of Time, Fixed And Established It, She Then Unmasks A Furious And Tyrannic Countenance, Against Which We Have No More The Courage Or The Power So Much As To Lift Up Our Eyes.

I Cruelly Hate Cruelty, Both By Nature And Reason, As The Worst Of All The Vices. But Then I Am So Soft In This That I Cannot Seea Chicken's Neck Wrung Without Distress, And Cannot Bear To Hear The Squealing Of A Hare Between The Teeth Of My Hounds.

Since We Cannot Attain Unto It, Let Us Revenge Ourselves By Railing At It; And Yet It Is Not Absolutely Railing Against Anything, To Proclaim Its Defects, Because They Are In All Things To Be Found, How Beautiful Or How Much To Be Coveted Soever.

I Leaf Through Books, I Do Not Study Them. What I Retain Of Them Is Something I No Longer Recognize As Anyone Else's.

Nature Should Have Been Pleased To Have Made This Age Miserable, Without Making It Also Ridiculous.