John Armstrong Quotes

32 Sourced Quotes

Toil, and be strong; by toil the flaccid nerves
Grow firm, and gain a more compacted tone:
The greener juices are by toil subdued,
Mellow'd, and subtilis'd; the vapid old
Expell'd, and all the rancor of the blood.

John Armstrong
Ye generous maids, revenge your sex's wrong; Let not the mean destroyer e'er approach Your sacred charms. Now muster all your pride, Contempt and scorn, that, shot from Beauty's eye, Confounds the mighty impudent, and smites The front unknown to shame.

John Armstrong
How sickly grow, How pale, the plants in those ill-fated vales That, circled round with the gigantic heap Of mountains, never felt, nor ever hope To feel, the genial vigor of the sun!

John Armstrong
For wisest ends this universal Power Gave appetites, from whose quick impulse life Subsists, by which we only live, all life Insipid else, unactive, unenjoy'd. Hence to this peopled earth, which, that extinct, That flame for propagation, soon would roll A lifeless mass, and vainly cumber heaven.

John Armstrong
Ye youths and virgins, when your generous blood Has drunk the warmth of fifteen summers, now The loves invite; now to new rapture wakes The finish'd sense: while stung with keen desire The madd'ning boy his bashful fetters bursts; And, urg'd with secret flames, the riper maid, Conscious and shy, betrays her smarting breast.

John Armstrong
The athletic fool, to whom what heaven denied of soul, is well compensated in limbs.

John Armstrong
Then love of pleasure sways each heart, and we From that no more than from ourselves can fly. Blameless when govern'd well. But where it errs Extravagant, and wildly leads to ill, Public or private, there its curbing pow'r Cool reason must exert.

John Armstrong
He knows enough, the mariner, who knows
Where lurk the shelves, and where the whirlpools boil,
What signs portend the storm: to subtler minds
He leaves to scan, from what mysterious cause
Charybdis rages in the Ionian wave;
Whence those impetuous currents in the main
Which neither oar nor sail can stem; and why
The roughening deep expects the storm, as sure
As red Orion mounts the shrouded heaven.

John Armstrong
Ye who amid this feverish world would wear A body free of pain, of cares a mind, Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air; Breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke And volatile corruption, from the dead, The dying, sickening, and the living world Exhal'd, to sully heaven's transparent dome With dim mortality.

John Armstrong
What avails it that indulgent Heaven
From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come,
If we, ingenious to torment ourselves,
Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own?
Enjoy the present; nor which needless cares
Of what may spring from blind misfortune's womb,
Appal the surest hour that life bestows.
Serence, and master of yourself, prepare
For what may come; and leave the rest to Heaven.

John Armstrong
Impious! forbear thus the first general hail. To disappoint, Increase and multiply, To shed thy blossoms thro' the desert air, And sow thy perish'd offspring in the winds.

John Armstrong
For want of timely care Millions have died of medicable wounds.

John Armstrong
To please the fancy is no trifling good, Where health is studied; for whatever moves The mind with calm delight, promotes the just And natural movements of th'harmonious frame.

John Armstrong
The blood, the fountain whence the spirits flow The generous stream that waters every part, And motion, vigor, and warm life conveys To every particle that moves or lives.

John Armstrong
How happy he whose toil
Has o'er his languid pow'rless limbs diffus'd
A pleasing lassitude; he not in vain
Invokes the gentle Deity of dreams.
His pow'rs the most voluptuously dissolve
In soft repose; on him the balmy dews
Of Sleep with double nutriment descend.

John Armstrong
This restless world
Is full of chances, which by habit's power
To learn to bear is easier than to shun.

John Armstrong
He chooses best, whose labor entertains
His vacant fancy most; the toil you hate
Fatigues you soon, and scarce improves your limbs.

John Armstrong
'Tis chiefly taste, or blunt, or gross, or fine,
Makes life insipid, bestial, or divine.
Better be born with taste to little rent
Than the dull monarch of a continent;
Without this bounty which the gods bestow,
Can Fortune make one favorite happy? No.

John Armstrong
Of right and wrong he taught
Truths as refined as ever Athens heard;
And (strange to tell) he practis'd what he preach'd.

John Armstrong
Virtue and sense are one; and, trust me, still
A faithless heart betrays the head unsound.

John Armstrong
Good native Taste, tho' rude, is seldom wrong,
Be it in music, painting, or in song:
But this, as well as other faculties,
Improves with age and ripens by degrees.

John Armstrong
There are, while human miseries abound,
A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth,
Without one fool or flatterer at your board,
Without one hour of sickness or disgust.

John Armstrong
Our greatest good, and what we least can spare,
Is hope: the last of all our evils, fear.

John Armstrong
Know, then, whatever cheerful and serene supports the mind supports the body too.

John Armstrong
There is, they say, (and I believe there is),
A spark within us of th' immortal fire,
That animates and moulds the grosser frame;
And when the body sinks, escapes to heaven;
Its native seat, and mixes with the gods.

John Armstrong
Your friends avoid you, brutishly transform'd
They hardly know you, or if one remains
To wish you well, he wishes you in heaven.

John Armstrong
For pale and trembling anger rushes in
With faltering speech, and eyes that wildly stare,
Fierce as the tiger, madder than the seas,
Desperate and armed with more than human strength.

John Armstrong
Weak withering age no rigid law forbids,
With frugal nectar, smooth and slow with balm,
The sapless habit daily to bedew,
And give the hesitating wheels of life
Gliblier to play.

John Armstrong
Music exalts each joy, allays each grief,
Expels diseases, softens every pain,
Subdues the rage of poison, and the plague.

John Armstrong
Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones,
And tottering empires rush by their own weight.

John Armstrong