Quotes by English Authors

Here rests his head upon the lap of earthA youth to fortune and to fame unknown.Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,And Melancholy marked him for her own.
Thomas Gray
Should the whole frame of nature round him break,In ruin and confusion hurled,He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack,And stand secure amidst a falling world.
Joseph Addison
…So when the last and dreadful hourThis crumbling pageant shall devour,The trumpet shall be heard on high,The dead shall live, the living die,And Music shall untune the sky
John Dryden
Many a man's tongue shakes out his master's undoing.
William Shakespeare
RUMOUR:"Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,The which in every language I pronounce,Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
William Shakespeare
Rumour is a pipeBlown by surmises, jealousies, conjecturesAnd of so easy and so plain a stopThat the blunt monster with uncounted heads,The still-discordant wavering multitude,Can play upon it.
William Shakespeare
Enter RUMOUR, painted full of ton
William Shakespeare
For as love is oftentimes won with beauty, so it is not kept, preserved, and continued, but by virtue and obedience.
Thomas More
It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.
Francis Bacon
You are as prone to love, as the sun is to shine.
Thomas Traherne
Upon this dispute not alone our lands and goods are engaged, but all that we call ours. These rights, these privileges, which made our fathers freemen, are in question.
John Eliot
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
To write a genuine familiar or truly English style, is to write as any one would speak in common conversation who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.
William Hazlitt
I came up stairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar.
William Congreve
Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!It seems she hangs upon the cheek of nightLike a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear,Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.So shows a snowy dove trooping with crowsAs yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,And, touching hers, make blessèd my rude hand.Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.
William Shakespeare
To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious.
William Penn
Crabbed age and youth cannot live together Youth is full of pleasure age is full of care Youth like summer morn age like winter weather Youth like summer brave age like winter bare. Youth is full sport age's breath is short Youth is nimble age is lame Youth is hot and bold age is weak and cold Youth is wild age is tame. Age I do abhor thee youth I do adore thee.
William Shakespeare
What though youth gave love and roses Age still leaves us friends and wine.
Thomas More
The multitude is always in the wrong.
Wentworth Dillon
A man may write himself out of reputation when nobody else can do it.
Thomas Paine
The virtue of adversity is fortitude which in mortals is the heroical virtue.
Francis Bacon
Sweet are the uses of adversity.
William Shakespeare
Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains losses and disappointments but let us have patience and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.
Joseph Addison
If you will call your troubles experiences and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you you will grow vigorous and happy however adverse your circumstances may seem to be.
John Heywood
Misfortunes tell us what fortune is.
Thomas Fuller
The harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly 'tis dearness only that gives everything its value.
Thomas Paine
The worst is not so long as we can say "This is the worst."
William Shakespeare
Cast away care he that loves sorrow lengthens not a day nor can he buy tomorrow.
Thomas Dekker
A hundredload of worry will not pay an ounce of debt.
George Herbert
Why then the world's mine oyster Which I with sword will open.
William Shakespeare
All the world's a stage And all the men and women merely players.
William Shakespeare
Such stuff the world is made of.
William Cowper
This world's a bubble.
Sir Francis Bacon
They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations.
Francis Bacon
Honest labor bears a lovely face.
Thomas Dekker
If all the year were playing holidays To sport would be as tedious as to work.
William Shakespeare
A good horse should be seldom spurred.
Thomas Fuller
Language is the armoury of the human mind and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
More than kisses letters mingle souls.
John Donne
Words once spoken can never be recalled.
Wentworth Dillon
Taffeta phrases silken terms precise Three-piled hyperboles spruce affectation Figures pedantical.
William Shakespeare
But yesterday the word of Caesar might Have stood against the world now lies he there And none so poor to do him reverence.
William Shakespeare
My word fly up my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
William Shakespeare
But words once spoke can never be recall'd.
Wentworth Dillon
Words that weep and tears that speak.
Abraham Cowley
Words writ in waters.
George Chapman
O gentle Romeo If thou dost love pronounce it faithfully. Or if thou think'st I am too quickly won I'll frown and be perverse and say thee nay So thou wilt woo: but else not for the world.
William Shakespeare
She's beautiful and therefore to be woo'd: She is a woman therefore to be won.
William Shakespeare
Men are April when they woo December when they wed.
William Shakespeare
Sigh no more ladies sigh no more Men were deceivers ever One foot in sea and one on shore To one thing constant never.
William Shakespeare
We may our ends by our beginnings know.
Sir John Denham
A hard beginning makes a good ending.
John Heywood
Fraily thy name is woman!
William Shakespeare
Such Polly are your sex - part truth part fiction Some thought much whim and all contradiction.
Richard Savage
Age cannot wither her nor custom stale Her infinite variety.
William Shakespeare
Grace was in all her steps heaven in her eye In every gesture dignity and love.
John Milton
But what is woman? Only one of nature's agreeable blunders.
Abraham Cowley
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.
William Congreve
Age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety other women cloy the appetites they feed but she makes hungry where most she satisfies.
William Shakespeare
Music and women I cannot but give way to whatever my business is.
Samuel Pepys