Work and Will

When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
Ah! who shall dare search through what sad maze
Thenceforth with incommunicable ways
Follow the desultory feet of Death?

-Christina Rossetti

Fame

As fame hath often been dangerous to the living, so it is to the dead of no use at all.

- Sir Walter Raleigh

Advertising Sincerity

How unsound and insincere is he who says, I have determined to deal with thee in a fair way- what are they doing? There is no occasion to give this notice. It will soon show itself by acts. The voice ought to be plainly written on the forehead.

- Marcus Aurelius

An Error of Legislators

What leads legislators into... error is confounding sins and crimes together - making no difference between moral evil and state rebellion: not considering that a man might be infected with moral evil, and yet be guilty of no crime punishable by law.

- Jack Nips

Pleasure

Wits, just like fools, at war about a name,
Have full as oft no meaning, or the same.
Self-love and reason to one end aspire,
Pain their aversion, and pleasure their desire;
But greedy that, its object would devour,
This taste the honey, and not wound the flower:
Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,
Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.

-Alexander Pope

Vanity

There are those among mankind, who can enjoy no relish of their being, except the world is made acquainted with all that relates to them, and think everything lost that passes unobserved.

-Sir Richard Steele

Spite

Since we cannot attain to greatness, let's have our revenge by railing against it.

-Sieur de Montaigne