A man so various, that he seem'd to be

Not one, but all mankind's epitome;

Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,

Was everything by starts, and nothing long;

But in the course of one revolving moon

Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Absalom and Achitophel. Part i. Line 545.

Most wretched men

Are cradled into poetry by wrong:

They learn in suffering what they teach in song.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): Julian and Maddalo. Line 544.

The hope of all who suffer,

The dread of all who wrong.

John G Whittier (1807-892): The Mantle of St. John de Matha.

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): The Present Crisis.

In the great right of an excessive wrong.

Robert Browning (1812-1890): The Ring and the Book. The other Half-Rome. Line 1055.

And if we do but watch the hour,

There never yet was human power

Which could evade, if unforgiven,

The patient search and vigil long

Of him who treasures up a wrong.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Mazeppa. Stanza 10.

His conduct still right, with his argument wrong.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774): Retaliation. Line 46.

For forms of government let fools contest;

Whate'er is best administer'd is best.

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;

His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.

In faith and hope the world will disagree,

But all mankind's concern is charity.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle iii. Line 303.

His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might

Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right.

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667): On the Death of Crashaw.

The multitude is always in the wrong.

Earl Of Roscommon (1633-1684): Essay on Translated Verse. Line 184.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep:

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to,—'t is a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 1.

I see the right, and I approve it too,

Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.

Samuel Garth (1670-1719): Ovid, Metamorphoses, vii. 20 (translated by Tate and Stonestreet, edited by Garth).

The wrong sow by th' eare.

John Heywood (Circa 1565): Proverbes. Part ii. Chap. ix.

Perhaps 't is pretty to force together

Thoughts so all unlike each other;

To mutter and mock a broken charm,

To dally with wrong that does no harm.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): Christabel. Conclusion to Part ii.

Then gently scan your brother man,

Still gentler sister woman;

Though they may gang a kennin' wrang,

To step aside is human.

Robert Burns (1759-1796): Address to the Unco Guid.

Forgiveness to the injured does belong;

But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong.

John Dryden (1631-1701): The Conquest of Granada. Part ii. Act i. Sc. 2.

Perhaps 't is pretty to force together

Thoughts so all unlike each other;

To mutter and mock a broken charm,

To dally with wrong that does no harm.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): Christabel. Conclusion to Part ii.

Behold on wrong

Swift vengeance waits; and art subdues the strong!

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Odyssey of Homer. Book viii. Line 367.

Brother, brother! we are both in the wrong.

John Gay (1688-1732): The Beggar's Opera. Act ii. Sc. 2.