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

Randolph

A free school

For th’ education of young gentlemen,

To study how to drink and take tobacco.

England, of all countries in the world,

Most blind to thine own good.

First worship God; he that forgets to pray

Bids not himself good morrow, nor good day.

Fond fools

Promise themselves a name from building churches.

It weaks the brain, it spoils the memory,

Hasting on age, and wilful poverty;

It drowns thy better parts, making thy name

To foes a laughter, to thy friends a shame.

’Tis virtue’s poison and the bane of trust,

The match of wrath, the fuel unto lust.

Quite leave this vice, and turn not to ’t again,

Upon presumption of a stronger brain;

For he who holds more wine than others can,

I rather count a hogshead than a man.

Reprove not in their wrath incensed men;

Good counsel comes clean out of reason then,

But when his fury is appeased and past,

He will conceive his fault, and mend at last,

When he is cool, and calm, then utter it;

No man gives physic in the midst o’ the fit.

Thy credit wary keep, ’tis quickly gone;

Being got by many actions, lost by one.

To tell thy mis’ries will no comfort breed;

Men help thee most, that think thou hast no need;

But if the world once thy misfortunes know,

Thou soon shalt lose a friend and find a foe.

Whoever makes his father’s heart to bleed,

Shall have a child that will revenge the deed.

Whose wound no salve can cure. Each blow doth leave

A lasting sear, that with a poison eats

Into the marrow of their fame, and lives;

Th’ eternal ulcer to their memories.

Mean spirits under disappointment, like small beer in a thunder-storm, always turn sour.