Quotes from Charles Churchill

Little do such men know the toil, the pains, the daily, nightly racking of the brains, to range the thoughts, the matter to digest, to cull fit phrases, and reject the rest.

Man and wife, Coupled together for the sake of strife.

Drawn by conceit from reason's plan How vain is that poor creature man; How pleas'd in ev'ry paltry elf To grate about that thing himself.

Nature, through all her works, in great degree, Borrows a blessing from variety. Music itself her needful aid requires To rouse the soul, and wake our dying fires.

Genius is independent of situation.

The danger chiefly lies in acting well; no crime's so great as daring to excel.

The surest way to health, say what they will, Is never to suppose we shall be ill; Most of the ills which we poor mortals know From doctors and imagination flow.

When satire flies abroad on falsehood's wing, Short is her life, and impotent her sting; But when to truth allied, the wound she gives Sinks deep, and to remotest ages lives.

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.

Old Age, a second child, by nature curst With more and greater evils than the first, Weak, sickly, full of pains: in ev'ry breath Railing at life, and yet afraid of death.

Prudent dullness marked him for a mayor.

Keep up appearances; there lies the test. The world will give thee credit for the rest.

The best things carried to excess are wrong.

When fiction rises pleasing to the eye, men will believe, because they love the lie; but truth herself, if clouded with a frown, must have some solemn proof to pass her down.

A joke's a very serious thing.

The laws I love; the lawyers I suspect.

A servile race Who, in mere want of fault, all merit place; Who blind obedience pay to ancient schools, Bigots to Greece, and slaves to musty rules.

To copy beauty forfeits all pretense to fame; to copy faults is want of sense

To copy faults is want of sense.

Be England what she will, With all her faults, she is my country still.

He mouths a sentence as curs mouth a bone.

There's a strange something, which without a brain Fools feel, and which e'en wise men can't explain, Planted in man, to bind him to that earth, In dearest ties, from whence he drew his birth.

By different methods different men excel, but where is he who can do all things well?

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