Quotes by English Authors - Page 31

The skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks,They are all fire and every one doth shine
William Shakespeare
The time approachesThat will with due decision make us knowWhat we shall say we have and what we owe.Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,But certain issue strokes must arbitrate;Towards which, advance th
William Shakespeare
What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord?Or to the dreadful summit of the cliffThat beetles o'er his base into the sea,And there assume some other horrible formWhich might deprive your sovereignty of reasonAnd draw you into madness? Think of it.[The very place puts toys of desperation,Without more motive, into every brainThat looks so many fathoms to the seaAnd hears it roar beneath.]
William Shakespeare
silence is not a langauge, its a weapon to make your dear one to feel
William Shakespeare
The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting.
Thomas Traherne
The dearest idol I have known,Whate'er that idol be,Help me to tear it from thy throne,And worship only thee.So shall my walk be close with God,Calm and serene my frame;So purer light shall mark the roadThat leads me to the Lamb.
William Cowper
The source of every crime, is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions. Defect in the understanding is ignorance; in reasoning, erroneous opinion.
Thomas Hobbes
Must I at length the Sword of Justice draw?Oh curst Effects of necessary Law!How ill my Fear they by my Mercy scan,Beware the Fury of a Patient Man.
John Dryden
Patience is inversely proportional to the distance from the front of the queue.
John Day
In a cool solitude of treesWhere leaves and birds a music spin,Mind that was weary is at ease,New rhythms in the soul begin.
William Kean Seymour
O take me from the busy crowd,I cannot bear the noise!For Nature's voice is never loud;I seek for quiet joys.The book I love is everywhere,And not in idle words;The book I love is known to all,And better lore affords.
John Clare
There is a charm in Solitude that cheersA feeling that the world knows nothing ofA green delight the wounded mind endearsAfter the hustling world is broken off
John Clare
In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be;Where all the noises, that on peace intrude,Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee,Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.
John Clare
I hate the very noise of troublous man Who did and does me all the harm he can. Free from the world I would a prisoner be And my own shadow all my company.
John Clare
Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.
Thomas Browne
Solitude sometimes is best society.
John Milton
But Nature granted to gold and silver no function with which we cannot easily dispense. Human folly has made them precious because they are rare. In contrast, Nature, like a most indulgent mother, has placed her best gifts out in the open, like air, water and the earth itself; vain and unprofitable things she has hidden away in remote places.
Thomas More
There are four kinds of readers. The first is like the hourglass; and their reading being as the sand, it runs in and runs out, and leaves not a vestige behind. A second is like the sponge, which imbibes everything, and returns it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtier. A third is like a jelly bag, allowing all that is pure to pass away, and retaining only the refuse and dregs. And the fourth is like the slaves in the diamond mines of Golconda, who, casting aside all that is worthless, retain only pure gems.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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
O fairest of all creation, last and bestOf all God's works, creature in whom excelledWhatever can to sight or thought be formed,Holy, divine, good, amiable, or sweet!How art thou lost, how on a sudden lost,Defaced, deflow'red, and now to death devote?
John Milton
But thought’s the slave of life, and life time’s fool;And time, that takes survey of all the world,Must have a stop. O, I could prophesy,But that the earthy and cold hand of deathLies on my tongue
William Shakespeare
When my country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir.
Thomas Paine
Modern fanaticism thrives in proportion to the quanitity of contradictions and nonsense it poures down the throats of the gaping multitude, and the jargon and mysticism it offers to their wonder and credulity.
William Hazlitt
If there is a country in the world where concord, according to common calculation, would be least expected, it is America. Made up as it is of people from different nations, accustomed to different forms and habits of government, speaking different languages, and more different in their modes of worship, it would appear that the union of such a people was impracticable; but by the simple operation of constructing government on the principles of society and the rights of man, every difficulty retires, and all the parts are brought into cordial unison. There the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged. Industry is not mortified by the splendid extravagance of a court rioting at its expense. Their taxes are few, because their government is just: and as there is nothing to render them wretched, there is nothing to engender riots and tumults.
Thomas Paine
In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,For they in thee a thousand errors note; But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,Who in despite of view is pleased to dote
William Shakespeare
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come.
William Shakespeare
For though the flame of liberty may sometimes cease to shine, the coal can never expire.
Thomas Paine
But what more oft in Nations grown corrupt,And by thir vices brought to servitude,Than to love Bondage more than Liberty,Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty;
John Milton
The blessedness of being little!!!
William Shakespeare
It is not then the existence or the non-existence, of the persons that I trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young woman engaged to be married, and while under this engagement, she is, to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost.
Thomas Paine
The expedition of my violent love outrun the pauser, reason.
William Shakespeare
... reason andlove keep little company together now-a-days...
William Shakespeare
... and yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days...
William Shakespeare
Were such things here as we do speak about?Or have we eaten on the insane rootThat takes the reason prisoner?
William Shakespeare
Yet not so strictly hath our Lord impos'd /Labor, as to debar when we need /Refreshment, whether food, or talk between,/ food of the mind, or this sweet intercourse/Of looks and smiles, for smiles from Reason flow,/To brutes denied, and are of Love the food, Love not the lowest end of human life. For not to irksome toil, but to delight/ He made us, and delight to reason join'd.
John Milton
Our reasons are not prophets When oft our fancies are.
William Shakespeare
if every one is left to judge of his own religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is wrong; but if they are to judge of each other’s religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is right; and therefore all the world is right, or all the world is wrong.
Thomas Paine
you are the cause by which I die
Geoffrey Chaucer
Somebody must trespass on the taboos of modern nationalism, in the interests of human reason. Business can't. Diplomacy won't. It has to be people like us.
Robert Byron
earn what you can since everything's for sale
Geoffrey Chaucer
She moves me not, or not removes at least affection's edge in me.
William Shakespeare
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
William Shakespeare
Diligence and Application have their due Encouragement, even in the remotest Parts of the World, and that no Case can be so low, so despicable, or so empty of Prospect, but that an unwearied Industry will go a great way to deliver us from it, will in time raise the meanest Creature to appear again in the World, and give him a new Case for his Life.
Daniel Defoe
Live by the words of intelligence endured..F@&$ IT!
William Shakespeare
And now Nineteen persons having been hang'd, and one prest to death, and Eight more condemned, in all Twenty and Eight, of which above a third part were Members of some of the Churches of N. England, and more than half of them of a good Conversation in general, and not one clear'd; about Fifty having confest themselves to be Witches, of which not one Executed; above an Hundred and Fifty in Prison, and Two Hundred more accused; the Special Commision of Oyer and Terminer comes to a period.—Robert Calef 1692
Robert Calef
We are in the Dark to one another's Purposes and Intendments, and there are a thousand Intrigues in our little Matters, which will not presently confess their Design, even to sagacious Inquisitors...
Joseph Glanville
Neither man nor angel can discern hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible except to God alone.
John Milton
. . . I will not be sworn, but love may trans-form me to an oyster, but, I’ll take my oath on it, till hehave made an oyster of me, he shall never make me sucha fool.
William Shakespeare
In the first place , I was removed from all the wickedness of the world here. I had neither the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, or the pride of life. I had nothing to covet; for I had all that I was now capable of enjoying.
Daniel Defoe
He that is proud eats up himself: pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle.
William Shakespeare
30 or 40 of such voluntary gentlemen would do more in a day than 100 of the rest that must be press'd to it by compulsion.
John Smith
The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.
William Hazlitt
Chese now," quod she, "oon of thise thynges tweye:To han me foul and old til that I deye,And be to yow a trewe, humble wyf,And nevere yow displese in al my lyf,Or elles ye wol han me yong and fair,And take youre aventure of the repairThat shal be to youre hous by cause of me,Or in som oother place, may wel be.Now chese yourselven, wheither that yow liketh.
Geoffrey Chaucer
There's small choice in rotten apples.
William Shakespeare
Orsino: For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won,Than women's are. ...For women are as roses, whose fair flow'rBeing once display'd doth fall that very hour.Viola: And so they are; alas, that they are so!To die, even when they to perfection grow!
William Shakespeare
such wanton, wild, and usual slips/ As are companions noted and most known/ To youth and liberty.
William Shakespeare
We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow
William Shakespeare
Young men think old men are fools, but old men know young men are fools.
George Chapman
CLEOPATRA: My salad days,When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,To say as I said then! But, come, away;Get me ink and paper:He shall have every day a several greeting,Or I'll unpeople Egypt.
William Shakespeare
Golden lads and girls all must, like chimmney-sweepers, come to dust.
William Shakespeare