C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Sewell

I am no courtier, no fawning dog of state,

To lick and kiss the hand that buffets me;

Nor can I smile upon my guest and praise

His stomach, when I know he feeds on poison,

And death disguised sits grinning at my table.

O, reputation! dearer far than life,

Thou precious balsam, lovely, sweet of smell,

Whose cordial drops once spilt by some rash hand,

Not all the owner’s care, nor the repenting toil

Of the rude spiller, ever can collect

To its first purity and native sweetness.

Vain empty words

Of honour, glory, and immortal fame,

Can these recall the spirit from its place,

Or re-inspire the breathless clay with life?

What tho’ your fame with all its thousand trumpets,

Sound o’er the sepulchres, will that awake

The sleeping dead.

Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt.

For often vice, provoked to shame, borrows the color of a virtuous deed; thus libertines are chaste, and misers good, a coward valiant, and a priest sincere.

Obedience is a part of religion, and an element of peace.

Sin is a state of mind, not an outward act.

We shall be judged, not by what we might have been, but what we have been.

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