Quotes by English Authors - Page 2

No living creature is naturally greedy, except from fear of want - or in the case of human beings, from vanity, the notion that you're better than people if you can display more superfluous property than they can.
Thomas More
He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows.
Thomas Fuller
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascendThe brightest heaven of invention!
William Shakespeare
Should the whole frame of nature round him break,In ruin and confusion hurled,He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack,And stand secure amidst a falling world.
Joseph Addison
Acquaintance I would have but when it depends not on the number but the choice of friends.
Abraham Cowley
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
William Shakespeare
Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
Thomas Paine
Love the itch and a cough cannot be hid.
Thomas Fuller
Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
William Hazlitt
A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.
Thomas Paine
What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord?Or to the dreadful summit of the cliffThat beetles o'er his base into the sea,And there assume some other horrible formWhich might deprive your sovereignty of reasonAnd draw you into madness? Think of it.[The very place puts toys of desperation,Without more motive, into every brainThat looks so many fathoms to the seaAnd hears it roar beneath.]
William Shakespeare
I mean by this Sacrament an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.
Book of Common Prayer
Oftentimes nothing profits more than self-esteem grounded on what is just and right and well-managed.
John Milton
Thus in this heaven he took his delight And smothered her with kisses upon kisses Till gradually he came to know where bliss is.
Geoffrey Chaucer
Pete couldn't believe how sanctimonious somebody could be just because they'd once had a soldering iron stuck up their arse.
Alexei Sayle
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
Francis Bacon
I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. Methought I was,--and methought I had,--but man is but a patched fool, ifthe will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom...
William Shakespeare
There are more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of by your philosophy.
William Shakespeare
And therefore I am come amongst you at this time, not as for my recreation or sport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all; to lay down, for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood, even the dust. I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England, too.
Elizabeth I
Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is! (Act 1, scene 1)
William Shakespeare
An art in which the artist by means of rhythm and great sincerity can convey to others the sentiment which he feels about life.
John Masefield
He who is afraid of every nettle should not piss in the grass.
Thomas Fuller
Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind, Reality's dark dream! I turn from you, and listen to the wind.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Be a friend to thyself, and others will be so too.
Thomas Fuller
He does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.
William Shakespeare
Nay, the same Solomon the king, although he excelled in the glory of treasure and magnificent buildings, of shipping and navigation, of service and attendance, of fame and renown, and the like, yet he maketh no claim to any of those glories, but only to the glory of inquisition of truth; for so he saith expressly, "The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out;" as if, according to the innocent play of children, the Divine Majesty took delight to hide His works, to the end to have them found out; and as if kings could not obtain a greater honour than to be God's playfellows in that game
Francis Bacon
I'll follow this good man, and go with you;And, having sworn truth, ever will be true.
William Shakespeare
Landscape painting is the obvious resource of misanthropy.
William Hazlitt
The flea though he kill none he does all the harm he can.
John Donne
If the world will be gulled let it be gulled.
Robert Burton
No 'tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church door but 'tis enough 'twill serve: ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered I warrant for this world.
William Shakespeare
The person who has a firm trust in the Supreme Being is powerful in his power wise by his wisdom happy by his happiness.
Joseph Addison
The image of God cut in ebony.
Thomas Fuller
I should be inclined, therefore, as I have hinted before, to consider the world and this life as the mighty process of God, not for the trial, but for the creation and formation of mind, a process necessary to awaken inert, chaotic matter into spirit, to sublimate the dust of the earth into soul, to elicit an ethereal spark from the clod of clay. And in this view of the subject, the various impressions and excitements which man receives through life may be considered as the forming hand of his Creator, acting by general laws, and awakening his sluggish existence, by the animating touches of the Divinity, into a capacity of superior enjoyment. The original sin of man is the torpor and corruption of the chaotic matter in which he may be said to be born.
Thomas Robert Malthus
Is it true, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer the most?That the strongest wander furthest and most hopelessly are lost?That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain?That the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain?
John Milton
Love is nature's second son.
George Chapman
It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.
William Shakespeare
Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.
Thomas Paine
Beware the fury of a patient man.
John Dryden
I am dying Egypt dying.
William Shakespeare
But there is another and greater distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be assigned, and that is the distinction of men into kings and subjects. Male and female are the distinctions of nature, good and band, the distinctions of heaven; but how a race of men came into the world so exalted above the rest, and distinguished like some new species, is worth inquiring into, and whether they are the means of happiness or of misery to mankind.
Thomas Paine
He who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost prospect of reformation that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come to beatific vision, that man by this very opinion declares that he is yet far short of truth.
John Milton
Now go with me and with this holy manInto the chantry by: there, before him,And underneath that consecrated roof,Plight me the full assurance of your faith.
William Shakespeare
Don't waste your love on somebody, who doesn't value it.
William Shakespeare
Come what come may, time and the hour run through the roughest day.
William Shakespeare
And shake the yoke of inauspicious starsFrom this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!
William Shakespeare
O how can wicked men seem so steady and untouched with such black hearts, while poor innocents stand like malefactors before them!
Samuel Richardson
God's mill grinds slow but sure.
George Herbert
By this reckoning he is more a shrew than she.
William Shakespeare
man's sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things; on the contrary, all the perceptions both of the senses and the mind bear reference to man and not to the Universe, and the human mind resembles these uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects, from which rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them.
Francis Bacon
Wickedness is weakness.
John Milton
If we go on in this way, we shall have a new art of poetry, of which one of the first rules will be: To remember to forget that there are any such things as sunshine and music in the world.
Thomas Love Peacock
It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on the world as a mass of truth, and as the word of God; they have disputed and wrangled, and have anathematized each other about the supposable meaning of particular parts and passages therein; one has said and insisted that such a passage meant such a thing, another that it meant directly the contrary, and a third, that it meant neither one nor the other, but something different from both; and this they have called understanding the Bible.It has happened, that all the answers that I have seen to the former part of 'The Age of Reason' have been written by priests: and these pious men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and understand the Bible; each understands it differently, but each understands it best; and they have agreed in nothing but in telling their readers that Thomas Paine understands it not.
Thomas Paine
The surest way to prevent seditions...is to take away the matter of them.
Francis Bacon
Variety is the soul of pleasure.
Aphra Behn
Faith is the fountain of prayer and prayer should be nothing else but faith exercised.
Thomas Manton
Where ignorance is bliss Tis folly to be wise.
Thomas Gray
Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed. His canon 'gainst self-slaughter!
William Shakespeare
Many lose heaven because they are ashamed to go in a fool's coat thither.
William Gurnall
A healthy body is a guest-chamber for the soul a sick body is a prison.
Sir Francis Bacon