Quotes from Love of Fame — Edward Young
1683–1765 England
16 quotes
None think the great unhappy but the great.
Titles are marks of honest men, and wise;
The fool or knave that wears a title lies.
Unlearned men of books assume the care,
As eunuchs are the guardians of the fair.
Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote,
And think they grow immortal as they quote.
They that on glorious ancestors enlarge,
Produce their debt instead of their discharge.
The booby father craves a booby son,
And by Heaven’s blessing thinks himself undone.
For her own breakfast she'll project a scheme,
Nor take her tea without a strategem.
How commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candle to the sun.
Where Nature’s end of language is declin’d,
And men talk only to conceal the mind.
The love of praise, howe'er concealed by art,
Reigns more or less, and glows in ev'ry heart.
When the Law shows her teeth, but dares not bite.
And waste their music on the savage race.
With skill she vibrates her eternal tongue,
Forever most divinely in the wrong.
Attribution
Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Edward Young (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.