Quotes by English Authors - Page 6

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;And to do that well craves a kind of wit:He must observe their mood on whom he jests,The quality of persons, and the time,And, like the haggard, check at every featherThat comes before his eye. This is a practiseAs full of labour as a wise man's artFor folly that he wisely shows is fit;But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit.
William Shakespeare
The only really interesting thing iswhat happens between two people in a room.
Francis Bacon
When that the poor have cried Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious And Brutus is an honourable man.
William Shakespeare
Restraining prayer we cease to fight Prayer keeps the Christian's armor bright And Satan trembles when he sees The weakest saint upon his knees.
William Cowper
Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast to soften rocks or bend a knotted oak.
William Congreve
Defer not till tomorrow to be wise tomorrow's sun to thee may never rise.
William Congreve
The happy have whole days,and those they choose.The unhappy have but hours,and those they lose.
Colley Cibber
Where life is more terrible than death it is the truest valor to dare to live.
Sir Thomas Browne
We ignorant of ourselves beg often our own harms which the wise powers deny us for our good.
William Shakespeare
I am two fools I know for loving and saying so.
John Donne
The man who has not anything to boast of but his illustrious ancestors is like a potato - the only good belonging to him is underground.
Thomas Overbury
Thy wish was father to that thought.
William Shakespeare
One religion is as true as another.
Henry Burton
Much rain wears the marble.
William Shakespeare
Good company in a journey makes the way to seem the shorter.
Izaak Walton
We know what we are but know not what we may be.
William Shakespeare
Let not thy sorrow die, though i am dead.
Wililam Shakespeare
Whatever is, is in its causes just;But purblind manSees but a part o' th' chain; the nearest link;His eyes not carrying to that equal beamThat poises all above.
John Dryden
Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a specialprovidence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will benow; if it be not now, yet it will come: thereadiness is all.
William Shakespeare
Great hopes make great men.
Thomas Fuller
The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
William Cowper
The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, in Apollo, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body and reduce it to harmony.
Francis Bacon
Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye.
William Shakespeare
Men call you fayre, and you doe credit it,For that your self ye daily such doe see:But the trew fayre, that is the gentle wit,And vertuous mind, is much more praysd of me.For all the rest, how ever fayre it be,Shall turne to nought and loose that glorious hew:But onely that is permanent and freeFrom frayle corruption, that doth flesh ensew.That is true beautie: that doth argue youTo be divine and borne of heavenly seed:Deriv'd from that fayre Spirit, from whom al trueAnd perfect beauty did at first proceed.He onely fayre, and what he fayre hath made,All other fayre lyke flowres untymely fade.
Edmund Spenser
In Antiochus and his daughter you have heard of monstrous lust the due and just reward; In Pericles, his queen, and daughter, seen, Although assailed with fortune fierce and keen, Virtue preserved from fell destruction's blast, Led on by heaven, and crowned with joy at last.
William Shakespeare
The Weird Sisters, hand in hand,Posters of the sea and land,Thus do go, about, about,Thrice to thine, thrice to mine,And thrice again to make up nine.Peace, the charm's wound up.
William Shakespeare
For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.
Francis Bacon
Give me my Romeo and when he shall die. Take him and cut him out in little stars And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.
William Shakespeare
This hand shall never more come near thee with such friendship
William Shakespeare
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:Then, heigh-ho, the holly!This life is most jolly.
William Shakespeare
If all the year were playing holidays To sport would be as tedious as to work.
William Shakespeare
We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute.
Thomas Paine
To most men experience is like the stern lights of a ship which illumine only the track it has passed.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Play's the Thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
William Shakespeare
O, let my books be then the eloquenceAnd dumb presagers of my speaking breast;Who plead for love, and look for recompense,More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.
William Shakespeare
Every other science presupposes intelligence as already existing and complete: the philosopher contemplates it in its growth, and as it were represents its history to the mind from its birth to its maturity.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
William Shakespeare
There was never law or sect or opinion did so much magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth.
Sir Francis Bacon
Your face, my thane, is as a book where menMay read strange matters. To beguile the time,Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,But be the serpent under't.
William Shakespeare
Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
John Milton
You are thought here to the most senseless and fit man for the job.
William Shakespeare
Within the infant rind of this small flowerPoison hath residence and medicine power.For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart.Two such opposèd kings encamp them still,In man as well as herbs—grace and rude will. And where the worser is predominant,Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.(Inside the little rind of this weak flower, there is both poison and powerful medicine. If you smell it, you feel good all over your body. But if you taste it, you die. There are two opposite elements in everything, in men as well as in herbs—good and evil. When evil is dominant, death soon kills the body like cancer.)
William Shakespeare
A man surprised is half beaten.
Thomas Fuller
For truth has such a face and such a mien As to be lov'd needs only to be seen.
John Dryden
Sleep is that golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.
Thomas Dekker
Go, prick thy face and over-red thy fear,Thou lily-livered boy.
William Shakespeare
A hundredload of worry will not pay an ounce of debt.
George Herbert
Silence does not always mark wisdom.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
True, I talk of dreams,Which are the children of an idle brain,Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,Which is as thin of substance as the air,And more inconstant than the wind, who woos Even now the frozen bosom of the north,And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.
William Shakespeare
Tis mightiest in the mightiest it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown His sceptre shows the force of temporal power The attribute to awe and majesty Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings But mercy is above this sceptred sway It is enthroned in the hearts of kings It is an attribute to God himself And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice.
William Shakespeare
We are cold to others only when we are dull in ourselves.
William Hazlitt
Brief as the lightning in the collied night;That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and Earth,And ere a man hath power to say "Behold!"The jaws of darkness do devour it up.So quick bright things come to confusion.
William Shakespeare
I take all knowledge to be my province.
Sir Francis Bacon
Those friends thou hast and their adoption tried grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.
William Shakespeare
Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.
Thomas Paine
Why then the world's mine oyster Which I with sword will open.
William Shakespeare
There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority?
Thomas Paine
In poems, equally as in philosophic disquisitions, genius produces the strongest impressions of novelty while it rescues the most admitted truths from the impotence caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Change of weather is the discourse of fools.
Thomas Fuller
Old foxes want no tutors.
Thomas Fuller