James Beattie Quotes

Zealous, yet modest; innocent, though free;
Patient of toil, serene amidst alarms;
Inflexible in faith, invincible in arms.

Wilt thou debase the heart which God refined?
No; let thy heaven-taught soul to heaven aspire,
To fancy, freedom, harmony, resigned;
Ambition's groveling crew forever left behind.

By the glare of false science betray’d,
That leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind.

Mine be the breezy hill that skirts the down,
Where a green grassy turf is all I crave,
With here and there a violet bestrewn,
Fast by a brook or fountain’s murmuring wave;
And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave!

'Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more; I mourn, but you woodlands I mourn not for you! For spring is returning your charms to restore, Perfumed with fresh fragrance and glittering with dew. Nor yet for the ravage of winter I mourn, Kind nature the embryo blossom shall save; But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn?

He thought as a sage, though he felt as a man.

Ah! when shall it dawn on the night of the grave!

Though richest hues the peacock's plumes adorn,
Yet horror screams from his discordant throat.
Rise, sons of harmony, and hail the morn,
While warbling larks on russet pinions float;
Or seek at noon the woodland scene remote,
Where the gray linnets carol from the hill:
O let them ne'er, with artificial note,
To please a tyrant, strain the little bill,
But sing what heaven inspires, and wander where they will.

Laws, as we read in ancient sages,
Have been like cobwebs in all ages:
Cobwebs for little flies are spread,
And laws for little folks are made;
But if an insect of renown,
Hornet or beetle, wasp or drone,
Be caught in quest of sport or plunder,
The flimsy fetter flies in sunder.

And beauty immortal awakes from the tomb.

To the pure soul by Fancy's fire refined,
Ah, what is mirth but turbulence unholy,
When with the charm compared of heavenly melancholy.

When squint-eyed Slander plies the unhallow'd tongue,
From poison'd maw when Treason weaves his line,
And Muse apostate (infamy to song!)
Grovels, low muttering, at Sedition's shrine.

Every man of learning wishes, that his son may be learned; and that not so much from a view to pecuniary advantage, as from a desire to have him supplied with the means of useful instruction and liberal amusement.

Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame’s proud temple shines afar?

What is a law, if those who make it
Become the forwardest to break it?