Quotes by English Authors - Page 39

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet
William Shakespeare
The course of true love never die run smooth
William Shakespeare
By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, but music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night and his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
William Shakespeare
Religion is nothing else but love to God and man.
William Penn
My feathered friends were so much to me that I am constantly tempted to make this sketch of my first years a book about birds and little else.
William Henry Hudson
You must lose a fly to catch a trout.
George Herbert
Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core, in my heart of heart, as I do thee.
William Shakespeare
Well, I must do’t. Away, my disposition, and possess me Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turn’d, Which quier’d with my drum, into a pipe Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice That babies lull asleep! The smiles of knaves Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys’ tears take up The glasses of my sight! A beggar’s tongue Make motion through my lips, and my arm’d knees, Who bow’d but in my stirrup, bend like his That hath receiv’d an alms! I will not do’t, Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth, And by my body’s action teach my mind A most inherent baseness.
William Shakespeare
He who has learned to pray has learned the greatest secret of a holy and a happy life.
William Law
Rome has been called the "Sacred City": - might not our Oxford be called so too? There is an air about it, resonant of joy and hope: it speaks with a thousand tongues to the heart: it waves its mighty shadow over the imagination: it stands in lowly sublimity, on the "hill of ages"; and points with prophetic fingers to the sky: it greets the eager gaze from afar, "with glistering spires and pinnacles adorned," that shine with an internal light as with the lustre of setting suns; and a dream and a glory hover round its head, as the spirits of former times, a throng of intellectual shapes, are seen retreating or advancing to the eye of memory: its streets are paved with the names of learning that can never wear out: its green quadrangles breathe the silence of thought.
William Hazlitt
Employment... is so essential to human happiness that indolence is justly considered the mother of misery.
Robert Burton
We gave ourselves for lost men, and prepared for death. Yet we did lift up our hearts and voices to God above, who "showeth His wonders in the deep".
Francis Bacon
Under loves heavy burden do I sink.--Romeo
William Shakespeare
Like madness is the glory of this life.
William Shakespeare
Suffer love! A good ephitet! I do suffer love indeed, for I love thee against my will.
William Shakespeare
The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.
William Hazlitt
Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?
Thomas Love Peacock
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
John Milton
Alas poor Yorick! I knew him Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest of most excellent fancy.
William Shakespeare
Follow pleasure and then will pleasure flee Flee pleasure and pleasure will follow thee.
John Heywood
Farewell, ungrateful traitor, Farewell, my perjured swain;Let never injured creature Believe a man again.The pleasure of possessingSurpasses all expressing,But 'tis too short a blessing, And love too long a pain.'Tis easy to deceive us In pity of your pain;But when we love you leave us To rail at you in vain.Before we have descried itThere is no bliss beside it,But she that once has tried it Will never love again.The passion we pretended Was only to obtain,But when the charm is ended The charmer you disdain.Your love by ours we measureTill we have lost our treasure,But dying is a pleasure When living is a pain.
John Dryden
Music the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have below.
Joseph Addison
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,Shakes so my single state of manThat function is smothered in surmise,And nothing is but what is not.
William Shakespeare
I'm a little wounded but I am not slain I will lay me down to bleed a while. Then I'll rise and fight again.
John Dryden
Be strong, live happy and love, but first of allHim whom to love is to obey, and keepHis great command!
John Milton
Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
But thoughts the slave of life, and life, Time’s fool,And Time, that takes survey of all the world,Must have a stop.
William Shakespeare
As in a tree, there is more sap in an Arm of the tree, than in a little sprig; but the sprig hath the same sap for kind that the Arm of the tree hath, and it all comes from the same root. So though there be more venom in some gross, crying sins, than in some others; yet there is no sin but hath the same sap, and the same venom, for the kind, that every sin hath, that the worst sin hath.
Jeremiah Burroughs
There is no sinner like a young saint.
Aphra Behn
This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
William Shakespeare
Not to be provoked is best but if moved never correct till the fume is spent for every stroke our fury strikes is sure to hit ourselves at last.
William Penn
Learning makes a man fit company for himself.
Thomas Fuller
Health is ... a blessing that money cannot buy.
Izaak Walton
Therefor I doubt not but, if it had been a thing contrary to any man’s right of dominion, or to the interest of men that have dominion, ‘that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two angles of a square,’ that doctrine should have been, if not disputed, yet by the burning of all books of geometry suppressed, as far as he whom it concerned was able.
Thomas Hobbes
In taking revenge a man is but equal to his enemy but in passing it over he is his superior.
Sir Francis Bacon
A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.
William Shakespeare
The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch Which hurts and is desired.
William Shakespeare
For it falls outThat what we have we prize not to the worthWhiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost,Why, then we rack the value, then we findThe virtue that possession would not show usWhile it was ours.
William Shakespeare
What treasures here do Mammon's sons behold! Yet know that all that which glitters is not gold.
Francis Quarles
Assume a virtue if you have it not.
William Shakespeare
Workers must root out the idea that by keeping the results of their labors to themselves a fortune will be assured to them. Patent fees are so much wasted money. The flying machine of the future will not be born fully fledged and capable of a flight for 1,000 miles or so. Like everything else it must be evolved gradually. The first difficulty is to get a thing that will fly at all. When this is made, a full description should be published as an aid to others. Excellence of design and workmanship will always defy competition. (1894)
Lawrence Hargrave
I am wealthy in my friends.
William Shakespeare
We often choose a friend as we do a mistress for no particular excellence in themselves but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.
William Hazlitt
For some must watch, while some must sleep So runs the world away
William Shakespeare
One short sleep past will wake eternally And death shall be no more Death thou shalt die.
John Donne
The preaching of God's word is hateful and contrary unto them. Why? For it is impossible to preach Christ, except thou preach against antichrist; that is to say, them which with their false doctrine and violence of sword enforce to quench the true doctrine of Christ.
William Tyndale
This story shall the good man teach his son;And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,From this day to the ending of the world,But we in it shall be remembered-We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;For he to-day that sheds his blood with meShall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,This day shall gentle his condition;And gentlemen in England now-a-bedShall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaksThat fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day
William Shakespeare
I find no peace, and all my war is done,I fear and hope; I burn and freeze like ice;I fly above the wind yet can I not arise;And naught I have and all the world I seize on.That looseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison,And holdeth me not, yet can I scape nowise;Nor letteth me live nor die at my devise,And yet of death it giveth none occasion.Without eyen I see, and without tongue I plain;I desire to perish, and yet I ask health;I love another, and thus I hate myself;I feed me in sorrow, and laugh in all my pain.Likewise displeaseth me both death and lifeAnd my delight is causer of this strife.
Thomas Wyatt
We, ignorant of ourselves,Beg often our own harms, which the wise powersDeny us for our good; so find we profitBy losing of our prayers.
William Shakespeare
So be satisfied and quiet, be contented with your contentment. I lack certain things that others have, but blessed be God, I have a contented heart which others have not.
Jeremiah Burroughs
Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.
Aphra Behn
And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?
William Shakespeare
A hard beginning makes a good ending.
John Heywood
Best trust the happy moments. ... The days that make us happy make us wise.
John Masefield
O, hereWill I set up my everlasting rest,And shake the yoke of inauspicious starsFrom this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O youThe doors of breath, seal with a righteous kissA dateless bargain to engrossing death!
William Shakespeare
Oh! How many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding-ring!
Colley Cibber
I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano!
William Shakespeare
For neither man nor angel can discern hypocrisy the only evil that walks invisible.
John Milton
Things done well and with care exempt themselves from fear.
William Shakespeare
Nature hath no goal, though she hath law.
John Donne