Quotes by English Authors - Page 30

These are the times that try men's souls.
Thomas Paine
Sweet are the uses of adversityWhich, like the toad, ugly and venomous,Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
William Shakespeare
I have the heart of a man, not a woman, and I am not afraid of anything.
Elizabeth I
O, that's a brave man! He writes brave verses, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely,
William Shakespeare
O, that's a brave man! He writes brave versrs, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely,
William Shakespeare
He stopped the flyersAnd by his rare example made the cowardTurn terror into sport. As weeds beforeA vessel under sail, so men obeyedAnd fell below his stem. His sword, Death's stamp,Where it did mark, it took; from face to footHe was a thing of blood, whose every motionWas timed with dying cries. Alone he enteredThe mortal gate o' th' city, which he paintedWith shunless destiny; aidless came offAnd with a sudden reinforcement struckCorioles like a planet. Now all's his,When by and by the dim of war gan pierceHis ready sense; then straight his doubled spiritRequickened what in flesh was fatigate,And to the battle came he, where he didRun reeking o'er the lives of men as if'Twere a perpetual spoil; and till we calledBoth field and city ours, he never stoodTo ease his breast with panting.
William Shakespeare
Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.
William Shakespeare
But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature. Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.
Thomas Browne
Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away.
Thomas Fuller
Nought’s had, all’s spent, where our desire is got without content.
William Shakespeare
In hours of bliss we oft have met:They could not always last;And though the present I regret,I'm grateful for the past.
William Congreve
To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently abeast!
William Shakespeare
Oh God, Oh God! that it were possibleTo undo things done; to call back yesterday!That time could turn up her swift and sandy glass,To untell days, and to redeem these hours.
Thomas Heywood
PORTERThis is a lot of knocking! Come to think of it, if a man were in charge of opening the gates of hell to let people in, he would have to turn the key a lot.
William Shakespeare
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
William Congreve
The mind is a universe and can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
John Milton
The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not anything can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.
Thomas Paine
The bare knowledge of God's will is inefficacious, it doth not better the heart. Knowledge alone is like a winter sun, which hath no heat or influence; it doth not warm the affections, or purify the conscience. Judas was a great luminary, he knew God's will, but he was a traitor.
Thomas Watson
Take the fact that you were created to love. Your heart can find real joy only through love - through loving and being loved.
Thomas Goodwin
The true Christian was intended by Christ to prove all things by the Word of God: all churches, all ministers, all teaching, all preaching, all doctrines, all sermons, all writings, all opinions, all practices. These are his marching orders. Prove all by the Word of God; measure all by the measure of the Bible; compare all with the standard of the Bible; weigh all in the balances of the Bible; examine all by the light of the Bible; test all in the crucible of the Bible. That which cannot abide the fire of the Bible, reject, refuse, repudiate, and cast away. This is the flag which he nailed to the mast. May it never be lowered!
John Wycliffe
Christ was born of a virgin, that we might be born of God. He took our flesh, that He might give us His Spirit. He lay in the manger that we might lie in paradise. He came down from heaven, that He might bring us to heaven. And what was all this but love? If our hearts be not rocks, this love of Christ should affect us. Behold, love that surpasses knowledge!
Thomas Watson
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
From too much liberty, my Lucio, libertyAs surfeit is the father of much fast,So every scope of the immoderate useTurns to restraint. Our natures do pursue, -Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, - A thirsty evil; and when we drink we die.
William Shakespeare
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.[Henry V, Act IV Scene I]
William Shakespeare
...and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us; do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
William Shakespeare
Mislike me not for my complexion,The shadowed livery of the burnished sun,To whom I am a neighbor and near bred.Bring me the fairest creature northward born,Where Phoebus' fire scarce thaws the icicles,And let us make incision for your loveTo prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine.
William Shakespeare
May it please your Majesty I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me whose servant I am here.
William Lenthall
My story being done,She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:She swore,––in faith, twas strange, 'twas passing strange;'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful:She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'dThat heaven had made her such a man: she thank'd me,And bade me, if I had a friend that lov'd her,I should but teach him how to tell my story.And that would woo her.
William Shakespeare
Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.
William Shakespeare
We cry down the law in respect of justification, but we set it up as a rule of sanctification. The law sends us to the Gospel that we may be justified; and the Gospel sends us to the law again to inquire what is our duty as those who are justified.
Samuel Bolton
The lower classes of people in Europe may at some future periodbe much better instructed than they are at present; they may be taughtto employ the little spare time they have in many better ways than atthe ale-house; they may live under better and more equal laws than theyhave ever hitherto done, perhaps, in any country; and I even conceive itpossible, though not probable that they may have more leisure; but it isnot in the nature of things that they can be awarded such a quantity ofmoney or subsistence as will allow them all to marry early, in the fullconfidence that they shall be able to provide with ease for a numerousfamily.
Thomas Robert Malthus
Justice is the insurance which we have on our lives and property. Obedience is the premium which we pay for it.
William Penn
Great was the work of creation, but greater was the work of redemption. Great wisdom was seen in making us—but more miraculous wisdom in saving us. Great power was seen in bringing us out of nothing—but greater power in helping us when we were worse than nothing. (...) In the creation, God gave us ourselves; in the redemption, He gave us Himself.
Thomas Watson
And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it. And so have all things their beginning by the love of God.In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.
Julian of Norwich
Thy best of rest is sleep,And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'stThy death, which is no more.
William Shakespeare
The death of each days life
William Shakespeare
What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyesWould, with themselves, shut up my thoughts...
William Shakespeare
There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.
Thomas Paine
Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit,And look on death itself!
William Shakespeare
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,Chief nourisher in life's feast.
William Shakespeare
What hath night to do with sleep?
John Milton
Sacrifices are no sacrifices when they are repaid a thousand fold.
William Hazlitt
What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; it's dearness only that gives everthing its value.
Thomas Paine
Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove.O no, it is an ever-fixed markThat looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wand'ring bark,Whose worth's unknown, although his height be t
William Shakespeare
To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus...
William Shakespeare
Sometime [Queen Mab] driveth o'er a soldier's neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,Of healths five fathom deep; and then anonDrums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or twoAnd sleeps again
William Shakespeare
Be bloody, bold, and resolute. Laugh to scornThe power of man, for none of woman bornShall harm Macbeth.
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
turn him into stars and form a constellation in his image. His face will make the heavens so beautiful that the world will fall in love with the night and forget about the garish sun.
William Shakespeare
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
Francis Bacon
The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
Francis Bacon
If I were to kiss you then go to hell, I would. So then I can brag with the devils I saw heaven without ever entering it.
William Shakespeare
O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?O, stay and hear; your true love's coming,That can sing both high and low:Trip no further, pretty sweeting;Journeys end in lovers meeting,Every wise man's son doth know.What is love? 'Tis not hereafter;Present mirth hath present laughter;What's to come is still unsure:In delay there lies not plenty;Then, come kiss me, sweet and twenty,Youth's a stuff will not endure.
William Shakespeare
Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.
William Shakespeare
It is our work to cast care, and it is God's work to take care.
Thomas Watson
Let's be about leaving this world better than we find it each and every day. Our life is a testimony and through us divine loving is becoming more manifest. Greater good is calling upon us here in this world to be done this day. One of my rallying calls is let's go out and do some good. This is who we are. This is what we are about.
John Morton
Thick is the darkness-- Sunward, O, sunward!Rough is the highway-- Onward, still onward!Dawn harbors surely East of the shadows.Facing us somewhere Spread the sweet meadows.Upward and forward! Time will restore us:Light is above us, Rest is before us.
William Ernest Henley
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'stBut in his motion like an angel sings,Still quiring [making music] to the young-eyed cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls,But whilst this muddy vesture of decayDoth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it.
William Shakespeare
A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,And pavement stars—as starts to thee appearSoon in the galaxy, that milky wayWhich mightly as a circling zone thou seestPowder'd wiht stars.
John Milton
Come let us haste, the stars grow high, But night sits monarch yet in the mid sky.
John Milton