Nature I'll court in her sequester'd haunts, By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove or cell; Where the poised lark his evening ditty chaunts, And health, and peace, and contemplation dwell. --SMOLLETT.
O, blest retirement! friend to life's decline-- How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these, A youth of labor with an age of ease! --GOLDSMITH.
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. --GRAY.
Depart from the highway, and transplant thyself in some enclosed ground; for it is hard for a tree that stands by the wayside to keep her fruit till it be ripe.--ST. CHRYSOSTOM.
Exert your talents and distinguish yourself, and don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.--DR. JOHNSON.
The statesman, lawyer, merchant, man of trade Pants for the refuge of some rural shade, Where all his long anxieties forgot Amid the charms of a sequester'd spot, Or recollected only to gild o'er And add a smile to what was sweet before, He may possess the joys he thinks he sees, Lay his old age upon the lap of ease, Improve the remnant of his wasted span. And having lived a trifler, die a man. --COWPER.
But what, it may be asked, are the requisites for a life of retirement? A man may be weary of the toils and torments of business, and yet quite unfit for the tranquil retreat. Without literature, friendship, and religion, retirement is in most cases found to be a dead, flat level, a barren waste, and a blank. Neither the body nor the soul can enjoy health and life in a vacuum.--RUSTICUS.
RICHES.--Riches exclude only one inconvenience,--that is, poverty. --DR. JOHNSON.
Great abundance of riches cannot of any man be both gathered and kept without sin.--ERASMUS.
Riches, honors, and pleasures are the sweets which destroy the mind's appetite for its heavenly food; poverty, disgrace, and pain are the bitters which restore it.--BISHOP HORNE.
A man's true wealth is the good he does in this world.--MOHAMMED.
Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer. --SHAKESPEARE.