Charles Churchill Quotes

Apt alliteration's artful aid.

And adepts in the speaking trade
Keep a cough by them ready made.

Knaves starve not in the land of fools.

When foes insult, and prudent friends dispense,
In pity's strains, the worst of insolence,
Oft with thee, Lloyd, I steal an hour from grief,
And in thy social converse find relief.

The two extremes appear like man and wife,
Coupled together for the sake of strife.

He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone.

Fashion—a word which knaves and fools may use,
Their knavery and folly to excuse.
To copy beauties, forfeits all pretence
To fame—to copy faults, is want of sense.

Who to patch up his fame, or fill his purse,
Still pilfers wretched plans, and makes them worse;
Like gypsies, lest the stolen brat be known,
Defacing first, then claiming for his own.

Just to the windward of the law.

But, spite of all the criticising elves,
Those who would make us feel—must feel themselves.

'Tis mighty easy o'er a glass of wine
On vain refinements vainly to refine,
To laugh at poverty in plenty's reign,
To boast of apathy when out of pain,
And in each sentence, worthy of the schools,
Varnish'd with sophistry, to deal out rules
Most fit for practice, but for one poor fault,
That into practice they can ne'er be brought.

Wherever waves can roll, and winds can blow.

Men the most infamous are fond of fame,
And those who fear not guilt yet start at shame.

Why should we fear? and what? The laws?
They all are arm'd in Virtue's cause;
And aiming at the self-same end,
Satire is always Virtue's friend.

So much they talked, so very little said.