For the normal business of living man is most at ease on the ground.

-Allsop, (Harold) Bruce
  A Modern Theory of  Architecture.

Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care, But for another gives its ease, And builds a heaven in hell's despair.

-Blake,William
  Songs of Experience,'The Clod and the Pebble'.

Love seeketh only self to please, To bind another to its delight, Joys in another's loss of ease And builds a hell in heaven's despite.

-Blake,William
  Songs of Experience,'The Clod and the Pebble'.

Studious of laborious ease.

-Cowper,William
  The Task, bk.3,'The Garden', l.361.

Do not expect again a phoenix hour, The triple-towered sky, the dove complaining, Sudden the rain of gold and heart's first ease Traced under trees by the eldritch light of sundown.

-Day-Lewis, Cecil
  'From Feathers to Iron'.

Whate'er he did was done with so much ease, In him alone,'twas natural to please.

-Dryden,John
Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.27^8.

Why should he, with wealth and honour blest, Refuse his age the needful hours of rest? Punish a body which he could not please; Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease? And all to leave what with his toil he won To that unfeathered two-legged thing, a son.

-Dryden,John
Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.165^70.

My wealth is health and perfect ease; My conscience clear my chief defence; I neither seek by bribes to please, Nor by deceit to breed offence. Thus do I live; thus will I die. Would all did so well as I!

-Dyer, Sir Edward
  'In Praise of a Contented Mind'.

But set down This, set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  'The  Journey of the Magi'.

Are you at ease now? Is your heart at rest? Now you have got a shadow, an umbrella To keep the scorching world's opinion From your fair credit. 328

-Fo, Dario
  Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, act 3, sc.1. Italian      playwright       and       actor-manager,       whose often

For to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.

-Milton,John
  Lycidas, l.152^3.

Thus Belial with words clothed in reason's garb Counselled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth, Not peace.

-Milton,John
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.226^8.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

-Pope, Alexander
An Essay on Criticism, l.362^5.

   O Woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!

-Scott, Sir Walter
  Marmion, canto 6, stanza 30.

In ease of body, peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level and the beggar who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.

-Smith, Adam
  TheTheory of Moral Sentiments.

Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.

-Spenser, Edmund
  The Faerie Queen, bk.1, canto 9, stanza 40.

Alas! so all things now do hold their peace, Heaven and earth disturbed in no thing† Calm is the sea, the waves work less and less; So am not I whom love, alas, doth wring, Bringing before my face the great increase Of my desires, whereat I weep and sing, In joy and woe, as in a doubtful ease. For my sweet thoughts sometime do pleasure bring, But by and by the cause of my disease Gives me a pang that inwardly doth sting, When that I think what grief it is again To live and lack the thing should rid my pain.

-Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of
  'Alas! so all things now do hold their peace'.