Quotes by English Authors - Page 31

Variety's the very spice of life That gives it all its flavour.
William Cowper
They wonder much to hear that gold which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has value, should yet be thought of less value than this metal. That a man of lead, who has no more sense than a log of wood, and is as bad as he is foolish, should have many wise and good men to serve him, only because he has a great heap of that metal...
Thomas More
I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it.
Thomas Paine
Better is half a loaf than no bread.
John Heywood
My soule, poore soule thou talkes of things/ Thou knowest not what, my soule hath sliver wings,/ That mounts me up unto the highest heavens.
Thomas Kyd
Many strokes though with a little axe Hew down and fell the hardest-timber'd oak.
William Shakespeare
She that in life and love refuses me, In death and shame my partner she shall be.
Thomas Middleton
Tax not so bad a voice to slander music any more than once.
William Shakespeare
Calumny is a vice of curious constitution trying to kill it keeps it alive leave it to itself and it will die a natural death.
Thomas Paine
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares, And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest, Where can we finde two better hemispheares Without sharpe North, without declining West? What ever dyes, was not mixt equally; If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.
John Donne
These times of woe afford no time to woo.
William Shakespeare
He that is thy friend indeed,He will help thee in thy need:If thou sorrow, he will weep;If thou wake, he cannot sleep:Thus of every grief in heartHe with thee doth bear a part.These are certain signs to knowFaithful friend from flattering foe.
William Shakespeare
They are proud in humility proud in that they are not proud.
Henry Burton
Where glowing embers through the roomTeach light to counterfeit a gloom...
John Milton
Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.
Thomas Paine
We had as lief not be as not be ourselves.
William Hazlitt
Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of DenmarkIs by a forged process of my deathRankly abused: but know, thou noble youth,The serpent that did sting thy father's lifeNow wears his crown.
William Shakespeare
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare
I neither oblige the belief of other person, nor overhastily subscribe mine own. Nor have I stood with others computing or collating years and chronologies, lest I should be vainly curious about the time and circumstance of things, whereof the substance is so much in doubt. By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes.
John Milton
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea The ploughman homeward plods his weary way And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Thomas Gray
If I do not believe as you believe, it proves that you do not believe as I believe, and that is all that it proves.
Thomas Paine
The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law. - Romeo
William Shakespeare
They are proud in humility proud that they are not proud.
Robert Burton
We can live without our friends but not without our neighbors.
Thomas Fuller
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
William Shakespeare
Our doubts are traitors, and make us loose the good that we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
William Shakespeare
Those lips that Love's own hand did makeBreathed forth the sound that said, 'I hate'To me that languished for her sake,But, when she saw my woeful state,Straight in her heart did mercy come,Chiding that tongue that ever sweetWas used in giving gentle doom,And taught it thus anew to greet:'I hate,' she altered with an endThat followed it as gentle dayDoth follow night, who like a fiendFrom Heaven to Hell is flown away.'I hate' from hate away she threwAnd saved my life, saying 'not you'.
William Shakespeare
Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.
William Shakespeare
He that has a great nose thinks everybody is speaking of it.
Thomas Fuller
Afore me! It is so very late,That we may call it early by and by.
William Shakespeare
I hate the day, because it lendeth lightTo see all things, but not my love to see.
Edmund Spenser
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare
The blessedness of being little!!!
William Shakespeare
I cannot live to hear the news from England.But I do prophesy th' election lightsOn Fortinbras; he has my dying voice.So tell him, with th' occurents, more and less,Which have solicited - the rest is silence.
William Shakespeare
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs.
William Shakespeare
A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.
William Hazlitt
When the devout religion of mine eyeMaintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires,And these, who, often drowned, could never die,Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sunNe'er saw her match since first the world begun.
William Shakespeare
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.
William Shakespeare
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow worldLike a Colossus; and we petty menWalk under his huge legs, and peep aboutTo find ourselves dishonourable graves.
William Shakespeare
And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
John Milton
The folly of one man is the fortune of another.
Sir Francis Bacon
...if pride, that plague of human nature, that source of so much misery, did not hinder it; for this vice does not measure happiness so much by its own conveniences, as by the misery of others; and would not be satisfied with being thought a goddess, if none were left that were miserable, over whom she might insult. Pride thinks its own happiness shines the brighter, by comparing it with the misfortunes of other persons; that by displaying its own wealth they may feel their poverty the more sensibly.
Thomas More
Middle age is youth without its levity And age without decay.
Daniel Defoe
I will believe in the right of one man to govern a nation despotically when I find a man born unto the world with boots and spurs and a nation with saddles on their backs.
Algernon Sidney
There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us.
Richard Sibbes
But Kate, dost thou understand thus much English? Canst thou love me?"Catherine: "I cannot tell."Henry: "Can any of your neighbours tell, Kate? I'll ask them.
William Shakespeare
I do love nothing in the world so well as you- is not that strange?
William Shakespeare
For such is the nature of man, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance.
Thomas Hobbes
Cordelia! stay a little. Ha! What is't thou say'st? Her voice was ever soft.
William Shakespeare
There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty.
Joseph Addison
now why is the devil's money accepted, the world's offer embraced, and God's rejected? Truly, men do not know the worth of what God offers them. The money the devil and the world offer is in their own currency, and is familiar to them. Swine trample on pearls, because they do not know their value. Men prefer the poor things they have because they are in their current possession. The devil seeks to peck out the eyes of men, that they do not see the blessed God and the happiness that is to be enjoyed in him. O how dull is the world's glass in the presence of true crystal! The magnet of earth will not draw man's affections while heaven is visible. He that has fed on the heavenly banquet cannot savor anything else.
George Swinnock
Silence is one great art of conversation.
William Hazlitt
And because the condition of man . . . is a condition of war of every one against every one, in which case every one is governed by his own reason, and there is nothing he can make use of that may not be a help unto him in preserving his life against his enemies; it followeth that in such a condition every man has a right to every thing, even to one another's body. And therefore, as long as this natural right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man, how strong or wise soever he be, of living out the time which nature ordinarily alloweth men to live. And consequently it is a precept, or general rule of reason: that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war. The first branch of which rule containeth the first and fundamental law of nature, which is: to seek peace and follow it. The second, the sum of the right of nature, which is: by all means we can to defend ourselves.
Thomas Hobbes
Let us revenge this withour pikes, ere we become rakes: for the gods know Ispeak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge.
William Shakespeare
Has Christ provided such a blessed banquet for us? He does not nurse us abroad—but feeds us with His own breast—nay, with His own blood! Let us, then, study to respond to this great love of Christ. It is true, we can never parallel His love. Yet let us show ourselves thankful. We can do nothing satisfactory—but we may do something out of gratitude. Christ gave Himself as a sin-offering for us. Let us give ourselves as a thank-offering for Him. If a man redeems another out of debt—will he not be grateful? How deeply do we stand obliged to Christ—who has redeemed us from hell!
Thomas Watson
Here come the lovers, full of joy and mirth.— Joy, gentle friends! joy and fresh days of love Accompany your hearts!
William Shakespeare
It was a precept of Pythagoras, that when we enter into the temple to worship God , we must not so much as speak or think of any worldly business, lest we make God's service an idle ,perfunctory, and lazy recreation. The same I may say of closet prayer.
Thomas Brooks
Drink not the third glass - which thou can'st not tame when once it is within thee.
George Herbert
Reading makes a full man conference a ready man and writing an exact man.
Sir Francis Bacon
On Pilgrim's Progress: “I could not have believed beforehand that Calvinism could be painted in such exquisitely delightful colors.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge