As The Twig Is Bent, So Grows

Wise Wretch! With Pleasures Too Refined To Please, With Too Much Spirit To Be E'er At Ease, With Too Much Quickness Ever To Be Taught, With Too Much Thinking To Have Common Thought: You Purchase Pain With All That Joy Can Give, And Die Of Nothing But A Rage To Live.

Learning Is Like Mercury, One Of The Most Powerful And Excellent Things In The World In Skillful Hands; In Unskillful, The Most Mischievous.

Presumptuous Man! The Reason Wouldst Thou Find,why Form'd So Weak, So Little, And So Blind?first, If Thou Canst, The Harder Reason Guess,why Form'd No Weaker, Blinder, And No Less!ask Of Thy Mother Earth, Why Oaks Are Madetaller Or Stronger Than The Weeds They Shade?or Ask Of Yonder Argent Fields Above,why Jove's Satellites Are Less Than Jove?

How Loved, How Honored Once, Avails Thee Not, To Whom Related, Or By Whom Begot A Heap Of Dust Alone Remains Of Thee 'tis All Thou Art, And All The Proud Shall Be!

In Adamantine Chains Shall Death Be Bound, And Hell's Grim Tyrant Feel Th' Eternal Wound.