Quotes by English Authors - Page 26

Some are born great, others achieve greatness.
William Shakespeare
Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.
William Shakespeare
All's well that ends well.
William Shakespeare
Are you sure/That we are awake? It seems to me/That yet we sleep, we dream
William Shakespeare
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
All causes shall give way: I am in bloodStepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,Returning were as tedious as go o’er.
William Shakespeare
You speak an infinite deal of nothing.
William Shakespeare
These violent delights have violent endsAnd in their triump die, like fire and powderWhich, as they kiss, consume
William Shakespeare
Methinks I lied all winter, when I sworeMy love was infinite, if spring makes it more.
John Donne
...and when he dies, cut him out in little stars, and the face of heaven will be so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no heed to the garish sun.
William Shakespeare
Benvolio: What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?Romeo: Not having that, which, having, makes them short.
William Shakespeare
Romeo: I dreamt a dream tonight.Mercutio: And so did I.Romeo: Well, what was yours?Mercutio: That dreamers often lie.
William Shakespeare
Those people cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them because they see and covet what He has not given them. All of our discontents for what we want appear to me to spring from want of thankfulness for what we have.
Daniel Defoe
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
She that in life and love refuses me, In death and shame my partner she shall be.
Thomas Middleton
Tis time to die, when 'tis a shame to live.
Thomas Middleton
Many a man has been ashamed of his wicked attempts, when he has been repulsed, that would never have been ashamed of them, had he succeeded.
Samuel Richardson
Adversity hath slain her thousand, but prosperity her ten thousand.
Thomas Brooks
I know that my singing doesn’t make the moon rise, nor does it make the stars shine. But without my song, the night would seem empty and incomplete. There is more to daybreak than light, just as there is more to nighttime than darkness.
Geoffrey Chaucer
So many horrid Ghosts.
William Shakespeare
Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions. Expedience and right are different things.
Thomas Paine
The lunatic, the lover, and the poetAre of imagination all compact:One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet's penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name.
William Shakespeare
...and there encountered with him all at once Sir Bors, Sir Ector, and Sir Lionel, and they three smote him at once with their spears, and with force of themselves they smote Sir Lancelot's horse reverse to the earth. And by misfortune Sir Bors smote Sir Lancelot through the shield into the side...
Thomas Malory
Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.
Joseph Addison
The smallest thing by the influence of eternity is made infinite and eternal. We pass through a standing continent or region of ages, that are already ebfore us, glorious and perfect while we come to them. Like men in a ship we pass forward, the shores and marks seeming to go backward, though we move and they stand still. We are not with them in our progressive motion, but prevent the swiftness of our course, and are present with them in our understandings. Like the sun we dart our rays before us, and occupy those spaces with light and contemplation which we move towards, but possess not with our bodies. And seeing all things in the light of Divine knowledge, eternally serving God, rejoice unspeakable in that service, and enjoy it all.
Thomas Traherne
The sky's inclemency stirs up the angry winds;the watery clouds are soaking with ceaseless rain.The turbulent Vltava, swollen with rainy waves,Bursting, impetuous, breaks through its river banks.
Elizabeth Jane Weston
Pour on, I will endure.
William Shakespeare
O! I shall soon despair, when I shall seeThat Thou lovest mankind well, yet wilt not choose me,And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.
John Donne
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
Thomas Paine
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!Here will we sit and let the sounds of musicCreep in our ears: soft stillness and the nightBecome the touches of sweet harmony.Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heavenIs thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'stBut in his motion like an angel sings,Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;Such harmony is in immortal souls;But whilst this muddy vesture of decayDoth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."- Lorenzo, Acte V, Scene 1
William Shakespeare
The incarnation took all that properly belongs to our humanity and delivered it back to us, redeemed. All of our inclinations and appetites and capacities and yearnings are purified and gathered up and glorified by Christ. He did not come to thin out human life; He came to set it free. All the dancing and feasting and processing and singing and building and sculpting and baking and merrymaking that belong to us, and that were stolen away into the service of false gods, are returned to us in the gospel.
Thomas Howard
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
Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,— For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
William Shakespeare
He was, as every truly great poet has ever been, a good man; but finding it impossible to realize his own aspirations, either in religion or politics, or society, he gave up his heart to the living spirit and light within him, and avenged himself on the world by enriching it with this record of his own transcendental ideal.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ.
William Shakespeare
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mockThe meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss,Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger:But O, what damnèd minutes tells he o'erWho dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!(Act 3, scene 3, 165–171)
William Shakespeare
If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.
William Shakespeare
I have spoken of Jonah, and of the story of him and the whale. — A fit story for ridicule, if it was written to be believed; or of laughter, if it was intended to try what credulity could swallow; for, if it could swallow Jonah and the whale it could swallow anything.
Thomas Paine
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.
William Hazlitt
Now, if the writers of these four books [Gospels] had gone into a court of justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would have been in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury, and would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these are the books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given by divine inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of God.
Thomas Paine
I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdity of my waking thoughts.
Thomas Hobbes
Some men may be snared by beauty alone, but none can be held except by virtue and compliance.
Thomas More
Mortals that would follow me, Love virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or if virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her.
John Milton
Mortals that would follow me, Love virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than they sphery chime; Or if virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her.
John Milton
You may make love in dancing as well as sitting.
Aphra Behn
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.
William Shakespeare
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
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
My noble father,I do perceive here a divided duty.To you I am bound for life and education.My life and education both do learn meHow to respect you. You are the lord of my duty,I am hitherto your daughter. But here’s my husband,And so much duty as my mother showedTo you, preferring you before her father,So much I challenge that I may professDue to the Moor my lord.
William Shakespeare
I joy, that in these straits I see my west;
John Donne
There exists in man a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition,to the grave.
Thomas Paine
What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused.
William Shakespeare
When devils will the blackest sins put onThey do suggest at first with heavenly shows
William Shakespeare
Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep...
John Milton
I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that's in me should set hell on fire.
William Shakespeare
Look upon good books; they are true friends, that will neither flatter nor dissemble: be you but true to yourself...and you shall need no other comfort nor counsel.
Francis Bacon
Oh, devil, devil!If that the earth could teem with woman’s tears,Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.Out of my sight!
William Shakespeare
It was a good answer that was made by one who when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows as having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods, — ‘Aye,’ asked he again, ‘but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?’ And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happens much oftener, neglect and pass them by.
Francis Bacon
Of all the remedies it has pleased almighty God to give man to relieve his suffering, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.
Thomas Sydenham
O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!" - Cassio (Act II, Scene iii)
William Shakespeare