Quotes by English Authors - Page 20

No one, on his deathbed, ever regretted having been a Catholic.
Thomas More
Macbeth does murder sleep - the innocent sleep,Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast.
William Shakespeare
For there was never yet philosopher That could endure the toothache patiently.
William Shakespeare
Aye me, how many perils do enfoldThe righteous man, to make him daily fall?Were not, that heavenly grace doth him uphold,And steadfast truth acquite him out of all.
Edmund Spenser
...and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us; do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
William Shakespeare
We are all in the same cart, going to execution; how can I hate anyone or wish anyone harm?
Thomas More
Better hazard once than always be in fear.
Thomas Fuller
Prayer should be the key of the day and the lock of the night.
Thomas Fuller
Now I am about to take my last voyage a great leap in the dark.
Thomas Hobbes
We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.
William Hazlitt
Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is there reading makes it more.
John Harington
Solitude sometimes is best society.
John Milton
I call therefore a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices both private and public, of peace and war.
John Milton
He that asks me what heaven is, means not to hear me, but to silence me; He knows I cannot tell him; when I meet him there, I shall be able to tell him, and then he will be as able to tell me; yet then we shall be but able to tell one another, this, this that we enjoy is heaven, but the tongues of angels, the tongues of glorified saints, shall not be able to express what that heaven is; for, even in heaven our faculties shall be finite.
John Donne
A good horse should be seldom spurred.
Thomas Fuller
If ever any beauty I did see,Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
John Donne
The soul of dispatch is decision.
William Hazlitt
The landscape of the mind, against which our thoughts and expectations move, when the wind of the imagination is active, changes as quickly as the clouds; and indeed it consists often of several landscapes, semi-transparent and showing through one another.
William Hurrell Mallock
Words are the only things that last for ever.
William Hazlitt
A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants and how much more unhappy he might be than he really is.
Joseph Addison
Then all the charm Is broken--all that phantom-world so fair Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread, And each mis-shape the other.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds:And as the mind is pitch'd the ear is pleasedWith melting airs, or martial, brisk or grave;Some chord in unison with what we hearIs touch'd within us, and the heart replies.
William Cowper
Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun;Thyself from thine affectionTakest warmth enough, and from thine eyeAll lesser birds will take their jollity.Up, up, fair bride, and callThy stars from out their several boxes, takeThy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and makeThyself a constellation of them all;And by their blazing signifyThat a great princess falls, but doth not die.Be thou a new star, that to us portendsEnds of much wonder; and be thou those ends.
John Donne
Better a little fire to warm us than a great one to burn us.
Thomas Fuller
Between cowardice and despair valour is gendered.
John Donne
He hath eaten me out of house and home.
William Shakespeare
In my mind's eye
William Shakespeare
Do not conceale thy heavenly voice,Which makes the hearts of Gods rejoyce,Least Musicke hearing no such thing,The Nightingale forget to sing.
Sir Francis Kynaston
When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul,Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-whit! To-who!—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. When all aloud the wind doe blow,And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl,To-whit! To-who!—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
William Shakespeare
Ay,sir;to be honest,as this world goes,is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
William Shakespeare
One truth discovered one pang of regret at not being able to express it is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.
William Hazlitt
But a smooth and steadfast mind,  Gentle thoughts and calm desires,  Hearts with equal love combined,  Kindle never-dying fires:—  Where these are not, I despise  Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes.
Thomas Carew
Charity begins at home but should not end there.
Thomas Fuller
The jury passing on the prisoner's life May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two Guiltier than him they try.
William Shakespeare
I could a tale unfold whose lightest wordWould harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,Thy knotted and combined locks to part,And each particular hair to stand on endLike quills upon the fretful porpentine.But this eternal blazon must not beTo ears of flesh and blood.List, list, O list!
William Shakespeare
By God, if women had written stories,As clerks had within here oratories,They would have written of men more wickednessThan all the mark of Adam may redress.
Geoffrey Chaucer
I sleep with thee, and wake with thee,And yet thou are not there;I fill my arms with thoughts of thee,And press the common air.
John Clare
Oft have I heard that grief softens the mind, And makes it fearful and degenerate; Think therefore on revenge and cease to weep.
William Shakespeare
True friendship is self-love at second hand.
William Hazlitt
Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.
William Shakespeare
We are fonder of visiting our friends in health than in sickness. We judge less favorably of their characters when any misfortune happens to them and a lucky hit either in business or reputation improves even their personal appearance in our eyes.
William Hazlitt
Dear love, for nothing less than theeWould I have broke this happy dream;It was a themeFor reason, much too strong for fantasy,Therefore thou wak'd'st me wisely; yetMy dream thou brok'st not, but continued'st it.Thou art so true that thoughts of thee sufficeTo make dreams truths, and fables histories;Enter these arms, for since thou thought'st it best,Not to dream all my dream, let's act the rest.
John Donne
What a day may bring a day may take away.
Thomas Fuller
Little pitchers have wide ears.
George Herbert
I'll habits gather by unseen degrees As brooks make rivers rivers run to seas.
John Dryden
Let all thy joys be as the month of May.
Francis Quarles
Finish, good lady; the bright day is done, And we are for the Dark. (Act 5, Scene 2)
William Shakespeare
thus with a kiss I die
William Shakespeare
Alack, sir, no; her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report: this cannot be cunning in her; if it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove.
William Shakespeare
Young men's love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.
William Shakespeare
They are the books, the arts, the academes,That show, contain and nourish all the world.
William Shakespeare
Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul But I do love thee! and when I love thee not, Chaos is come again.
William Shakespeare
Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Here comes a pair of very strange beast, which in all tongues are called "fools".
Bill Shakespeare
Had he not resembled My father as he slept I had done't!" Macbeth
William Shakespeare
Look on beauty,And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight;Which therein works a miracle in nature,Making them lightest that wear most of it:So are those crisped snaky golden locksWhich make such wanton gambols with the wind,Upon supposed fairness, often knownTo be the dowry of a second head,The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.Thus ornament is but the guiled shoreTo a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarfVeiling an Indian beauty; in a word,The seeming truth which cunning times put onTo entrap the wisest.
William Shakespeare
A coward's fear can make a coward valiant.
Thomas Fuller
Poetry: the best words in the best order.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Yet not so strictly hath our Lord impos'd /Labor, as to debar when we need /Refreshment, whether food, or talk between,/ food of the mind, or this sweet intercourse/Of looks and smiles, for smiles from Reason flow,/To brutes denied, and are of Love the food, Love not the lowest end of human life. For not to irksome toil, but to delight/ He made us, and delight to reason join'd.
John Milton
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
William Shakespeare