Quotes by English Authors - Page 30

To tell you the truth, though, I still haven't made up my mind whether I shall publish at all. Tastes differ so widely, and some people are so humourless, so uncharitable, and so absurdly wrong-headed, that one would probably do far better to relax and enjoy life than worry oneself to death trying to instruct or entertain a public which will only despise one's efforts, or at least feel no gratitude for them.
Thomas More
A saving, though an immethodical knowledge of Christ, will bring us to heaven, John 17: 2, but a regular and methodical, as well as a saving knowledge of him, will bring heaven into us, Col. 2: 2, 3.
John Flavel
There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good nature or something which must bear its appearance and supply its place. For this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity which is what we express by the word Good Breeding.
Joseph Addison
I will never do this, says one, yet does it: I am resolved to do this, says another; but flags upon second Thoughts: Or does it, tho’ awkwardly, for his Word’s sake: As if it were worse to break his Word, than to do amiss in keeping it.
William Penn
All Excess is ill: But Drunkenness is of the worst Sort.
William Penn
I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.
William Shakespeare
Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time. It is therefore at least millions to one that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.t
Thomas Paine
Some are born great some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.
William Shakespeare
It's madness the sheep to talk peace with the wolf
Thomas Fuller
All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
John Dryden
A good life fears not life nor death.
Thomas Fuller
Who knows himself a braggart, let him fear this, for it will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass.
William Shakespeare
O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?And shall I couple Hell?
William Shakespeare
I am disgrac'd impeach'd and baffled here - Pierc'd to the soul with slander's venom'd spear.
William Shakespeare
And thus I clothe my naked villainyWith odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ;And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.
William Shakespeare
Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns: And till my ghastly tale is told, This heart within me burns.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
True and false fears let us refrain, Let us love nobly, and live, and add again Years and years unto years, till we attain To write threescore: this is the second of our reign.
John Donne
Jack shall have Jill.Nought shall go ill.
William Shakespeare
Religion if in heavenly truths attired Needs only to be seen to be admired.
William Cowper
No Centaurs here, or Gorgons look to find,My subject is of man, and human kind.
Robert Burton
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Thomas Gray
(...) It,s hard not to be able. There, look there!/ I cannot get the movement nor the light;/Sometimes it almost makes a man despair/To try and try and never get it right./Oh, if I could -oh, if I only might,/I wouldn,t mind what hells I,d have to pass,/Not if the whole world called me fool and ass."Dauber (A poem). John Masefield. 1916. London William Heinemann
John Masefield
What's past is prologue.
William Shakespeare
None can love freedom heartily but good men - the rest love not freedom but licence.
John Milton
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they see nothing but sea.
Francis Bacon
[F]rom my years of understanding ... I happily chose this kind of life in which I yet live [i.e., unmarried], which I assure you for my own part hath hitherto best contented myself and I trust hath been most acceptable to God. From the which if either ambition of high estate offered to me in marriage by the pleasure and appointment of my prince ... or if the eschewing of the danger of my enemies or the avoiding of the peril of death ... could have drawn or dissuaded me from this kind of life, I had not now remained in this estate wherein you see me. But so constant have I always continued in this determination ... yet is it most true that at this day I stand free from any other meaning that either I have had in times past or have at this present.
Elizabeth I
At the round earth's imagined corners blowYour trumpets, angels, and arise, ariseFrom death, you numberless infinitiesOf souls, and to your scattered bodies go ;All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,All whom war, dea[r]th, age, agues, tyrannies,Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyesShall behold God, and never taste death's woe.But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space ;For, if above all these my sins abound,'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,Teach me how to repent, for that's as goodAs if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.
John Donne
We are such stuff As dreams are made on and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare
The devil…the prowde spirite…cannot endure to be mocked.
Thomas More
BEROWNE: What time o' day?ROSALINE: The hour that fools should ask.
William Shakespeare
That that is is.
William Shakespeare
Charity is the perfection and ornament of religion.
Joseph Addison
Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. then your love would also change.
William Shakespeare
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
William Shakespeare
Consult.../what reinforcement we may gain from hope,/If not, what resolution from despair.
John Milton
Some men may be snared by beauty alone, but none can be held except by virtue and compliance.
Thomas More
Doubt thou the stars are fire Doubt thou the sun doth moveDoubt truth to be a liar But never doubt I love
William Shakespeare
How blest am I in this discovering thee!To enter in these bonds is to be free;Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be. Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be
John Donne
In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me for she never speaks well of me herself nor suffers anybody else to rail at me.
William Congreve
The distant soul can shake the distant friend's soul and make the longing felt, over untold miles.
John Masefield
I can call spirits from the vasty deep."Why so can I, or so can any man. But will they come when you do call for them?
William Shakespeare
A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.
William Shakespeare
Knowledge is power.
Francis Bacon
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring barque, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare
Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please me.
William Shakespeare
Nothing in his life became him like leaving it.
William Shakespeare
Our state cannot be severed, we are one,One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.
John Milton
And as a man, who is attached to a prostitute, is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife, so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one.
Thomas Paine
...Who could refrain,tThat had a heart to love, and in that hearttCourage to make love known?
William Shakespeare
Out of the starless night that covers me, (O tribulation of the wind that rolls!) Black as the cloud of some tremendous spell, The susurration of the sighing sea Sounds like the sobbing whisper of two souls That tremble in a passion of farewell.To the desires that trebled life in me, (O melancholy of the wind that rolls!) The dreams that seemed the future to foretell, The hopes that mounted herward like the sea, To all the sweet things sent on happy souls, I cannot choose but bid a mute farewell.And to the girl who was so much to me (O lamentation of this wind that rolls!) Since I may not the life of her compel, Out of the night, beside the sounding sea, Full of the love that might have blent our souls, A sad, a last, a long, supreme farewell.
William Ernest Henley
If it is not strong upon your heart to practice what you read, to what end do you read? To increase your own condemnation? If your light and knowledge be not turned into practice, the more knowing a man you are, the more miserable a man you will be in the day of recompense; your light and knowledge will more torment you than all the devils in hell. Your knowledge will be that rod that will eternally lash you, and that scorpion that will forever bite you, and that worm that will everlastingly gnaw you; therefore read, and labor to know that you may do--or else you are undone forever.
Thomas Brooks
You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and Kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world.Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all Ages as with your walk and table: till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made: till you love men so as to desire their happiness, with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own: till you delight in God for being good to all: you never enjoy the world.
Thomas Traherne
Our doubts are traitors And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt.
William Shakespeare
Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away.
Thomas Fuller
I do desire we may be better strangers.
William Shakespeare
Grief is itself a med'cine.
William Cowper
I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore there be any kindness I can show or any good thing I can do for any fellow being let me do it now ... as I shall not pass this way again.
William Penn
Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
Thomas Hobbes
I have seen flowers come in stony placesAnd kind things done by men with ugly faces,And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races,So I trust, too.
John Masefield
Between optimism and pessimism, there is confidence in God.
Edmund Campion