“Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss conveyed
A fairer spirit or more welcome shade.”
On the Death of Mr. Addison (1721), line 45.
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Thomas Tickell 11
English poet and man of letters 1685–1740Related quotes

1790s, Farewell Address (1796)
Context: Every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more, that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome. Satisfied, that, if any circumstances have given peculiar value to my services, they were temporary, I have the consolation to believe, that, while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it.

Peace be around Thee.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Epitaph on Dirce - George Orwell called it 'one of the best epitaphs in English - If I were a woman it would be my favourite epitaph-it would be the one I should like to have for myself." - quoted in Orwell:Collected Works, It is What I Think, p. 45.

“It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.”

“What potent spirit guides the raptur'd eye
To pierce the shades of dim futurity?”
Source: Part I, lines 14 - 21, Pleasures of Hope (1799)
Context: p>What potent spirit guides the raptur'd eye
To pierce the shades of dim futurity?
Can Wisdom lend, with all her heav'nly pow'r,
The pledge of Joy's anticipated hour?Ah, no! she darkly sees the fate of man—
Her dim horizon bounded to a span;
Or, if she hold an image to the view,
Tis nature pictur'd too severely true.</p

“The glorified spirit of the infant is as a star to guide the mother to its own blissful clime.”
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 53.