John Armstrong (poet)

John Armstrong

John Armstrong (1709 – 7th September,1779) was a Scottish physician and poet.

Quotes

The Art of Preserving Health (1744)

• There are, while human miseries abound,
  A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth,
  Without one fool or flatterer at your board,
  Without one hour of sickness or disgust.
  • Book II, line 195.

• Weak withering age no rigid law forbids,
  With frugal nectar, smooth and slow with balm,
  The sapless habit daily to bedew,
  And give the hesitating wheels of life
  Gliblier to play.
  • Book II, line 484.

• This restless world
  Is full of chances, which by habit's power
  To learn to bear is easier than to shun.
  • Book II, line 453.

• How happy he whose toil
  Has o'er his languid pow'rless limbs diffus'd
  A pleasing lassitude; he not in vain
  Invokes the gentle Deity of dreams.
  His pow'rs the most voluptuously dissolve
  In soft repose; on him the balmy dews
  Of Sleep with double nutriment descend.
  • Book III, line 385.

• 'Tis not for mortals always to be blest.
  • Book IV, line 260.

• Of right and wrong he taught
  Truths as refined as ever Athens heard;
  And (strange to tell) he practis'd what he preach'd.
  • Book IV, line 301.

• Music exalts each joy, allays each grief,
  Expels diseases, softens every pain,
  Subdues the rage of poison, and the plague.
  • Book IV, line 512.

External links

• Encyclopedic article on John Armstrong (poet) on Wikipedia
• Works related to Author:John Armstrong on Wikisource
• Media related to John Armstrong (physician) on Wikimedia Commons