To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell;
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
In Stafford’s Niobe, printed when Milton was in his cradle, (1611,) is the following:—
True it is, sir, (said the Devil,) that I, storming at the name of supremacy, sought to depose my Creator; which the watchful, all-seeing eye of Providence finding, degraded me of my angelic dignities—dispossessed me of all pleasures; and the seraphs and cherubs, the Throne, Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Princedoms, Arch Angels, and all the Celestial Hierarchy, with a shout of applause, sung my departure out of Heaven. My alleluia was turned into an eheu. Now, forasmuch as I was an Angel of Light, it was the will of Wisdom to confine me to Darkness and make me Prince thereof. So that I, that could not obey in Heaven, might command in Hell; and, believe me, I had rather rule within my dark domain than to re-inhabit Cœlum empyream, and there live in subjection under check, a slave of the Most High.
Cæsar said he would rather be the first man in a village than the second man in Rome.
A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.—Garrick.
I would help others out of a fellow-feeling.—Burton: Anat. of Mel.
Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco.—Virgil: Æn. I.