Samuel Garth

Sir Samuel Garth (1661–1719) was an English physician and poet.

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Quotes

To die is landing on some silent shore
Where billows never break, nor tempests roar;
Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er.
- The Dispensary, Canto III, line 225; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Some fell by laudanum, and some by steel,
And death in ambush lay in every pill.
- The Dispensary, Canto IV, line 62.

Harsh words, though pertinent, uncouth appear:
None please the fancy, who offend the ear.
- The Dispensary, Canto IV, line 204.

I see the right, and I approve it too,
Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.
- Translation of Ovid, Metamorphoses, vii. 20 (translated by Tate and Stonestreet, edited by Garth), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "I know and love the good, yet, ah! the worst pursue" [veggio ’l meglio, et al peggior m’appiglio], Petrarch, Sonnet ccxxv. canzone xxi. To Laura in Life.

Hard was their lodging, homely was their food;
For all their luxury was doing good.
- Claremont, line 148, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "And learn the luxury of doing good", Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller, line 22; George Crabbe, Tales of the Hall, book iii; "If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces", William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act i. Sc. 2.