Quotes by English Authors - Page 35

man's sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things; on the contrary, all the perceptions both of the senses and the mind bear reference to man and not to the Universe, and the human mind resembles these uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects, from which rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them.
Francis Bacon
Olivia: What's a drunken man like, fool?Feste: Like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman: one draught above heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a third drowns him.
William Shakespeare
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in 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
I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more, is none
William Shakespeare
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,And then is heard no more. It is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
I understand a fury in your wordsBut not your words.
William Shakespeare
That in the captain's but a choleric word,Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.
William Shakespeare
Let us revenge this withour pikes, ere we become rakes: for the gods know Ispeak this in hunger for bread, not in thirst for revenge.
William Shakespeare
By heaven, I'll make a ghost of him that lets me.
William Shakespeare
The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
Thomas Paine
Men in rage strike those that wish them best.
William Shakespeare
We must be compelled to hold this doctrine to be false, and the old and new law called the Old and new Testament, to be impositions, fables and forgeries
Thomas Paine
To be or not to be that is the question.
William Shakespeare
Tis torture, and not mercy. Heaven is here Where Juliet lives, and every cat and dog And little mouse, every unworthy thing, Live here in heaven and may look on her, But Romeo may not.
William Shakespeare
A sad tale's best for winter: I have one of sprites and goblins.
William Shakespeare
It were a grief so brief to part with thee.Farewell.
William Shakespeare
Fie, fie upon her! There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out at every joint and motive of her body.
William Shakespeare
Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.
William Penn
Every man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to translate from one language into another, not only without losing a great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense.
Thomas Paine
Do not be too sure, young fellows,That you are better than your ancestors.
William Kean Seymour
I neither oblige the belief of other person, nor overhastily subscribe mine own. Nor have I stood with others computing or collating years and chronologies, lest I should be vainly curious about the time and circumstance of things, whereof the substance is so much in doubt. By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes.
John Milton
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
Experience is by industry achiev'd,And perfected by the swift course of time.
William Shakespeare
Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.
Francis Bacon
GLOUCESTERNow, good sir, what are you?EDGARA most poor man made tame to fortune's blows,Who by the art of known and feeling sorrowsAm pregnant to good pity.
William Shakespeare
(...) It,s hard not to be able. There, look there!/ I cannot get the movement nor the light;/Sometimes it almost makes a man despair/To try and try and never get it right./Oh, if I could -oh, if I only might,/I wouldn,t mind what hells I,d have to pass,/Not if the whole world called me fool and ass."Dauber (A poem). John Masefield. 1916. London William Heinemann
John Masefield
Those lips that Love's own hand did makeBreathed forth the sound that said, 'I hate'To me that languished for her sake,But, when she saw my woeful state,Straight in her heart did mercy come,Chiding that tongue that ever sweetWas used in giving gentle doom,And taught it thus anew to greet:'I hate,' she altered with an endThat followed it as gentle dayDoth follow night, who like a fiendFrom Heaven to Hell is flown away.'I hate' from hate away she threwAnd saved my life, saying 'not you'.
William Shakespeare
Never durst a poet touch a pen to writeUntil his ink was tempered with love's sighs.
William Shakespeare
My care is like my shadow in the sun, Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it, Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
Elizabeth I
Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deniest me is; Me it sucked first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be; Thou know’st that this cannot be said A sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead, Yet this enjoys before it woo, And pampered swells with one blood made of two, And this, alas, is more than we would do. Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare, Where we almost, nay more than married are. This flea is you and I, and this Our mariage bed and mariage temple is; Though parents grudge, and you, we are met, And cloisterd in these living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that, self-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three. Cruel and sudden, hast thou since Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence? Wherein could this flea guilty be, Except in that drop which it sucked from thee? Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now; ’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be: Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me, Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.
John Donne
Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.
William Kingdon Clifford
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?...The Bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express command of God. And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous, than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice.
Thomas Paine
There had stood a great house in the centre of the gardens, where now was left only that fragment of ruin. This house had been empty for a great while; years before his—the ancient man's—birth. It was a place shunned by the people of the village, as it had been shunned by their fathers before them. There were many things said about it, and all were of evil. No one ever went near it, either by day or night. In the village it was a synonym of all that is unholy and dreadful.
William Hope Hodgson
The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure, it's a little like making love, the physical act of love.
Francis Bacon
But evil is always illusion. It insists on the lie that we can have something for ourselves. This is the sole principle at work in hell. Lucifer chose to believe it; or, since it is unimaginable that he actually could have believed it, then we may say that he chose to pretend it might be. Very well, says Truth, you may pretend this. But the pretense will be, literally, your undoing. It will unmake you. You will have opted for something that is not, namely, a lie. Hell is built of lies.
Thomas Howard
...So little knowsAny but God alone to value rightThe good before him but perverts best thingsTo worst abuse or to their meanest use.
John Milton
Thou hast gone on in all thy life hitherto, ever since thou wast born, in a continual opposition to God Himself, unto the infinite Lord, the eternal first being of all the world; thy life hath been nothing but enmity to this God: thou hast as directly opposed, and striven against, and resisted Him, as ever man did oppose, and resist, and strive with another man, and this thou hast done in the whole course of thy life: certainly there is more in this to humble a man than anything that can be spoken to shew him the evil of sin.
Jeremiah Burroughs
Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think,Few come within the compass of my curse,—Wherein I did not some notorious ill,As kill a man, or else devise his death,Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it,Accuse some innocent and forswear myself,Set deadly enmity between two friends,Make poor men's cattle break their necks;Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,And bid the owners quench them with their tears.Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful thingsAs willingly as one would kill a fly,And nothing grieves me heartily indeedBut that I cannot do ten thousand more.
William Shakespeare
In thy foul throat thou liest.
William Shakespeare
All things are subject to decay and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
John Dryden
..What our contempt often hurls from us,We wish it our again; the present pleasure,By revolution lowering,does becomeThe opposite of itself..
William Shakespeare
Tis Fate that flings the dice,And as she flingsOf kings makes peasants,And of peasants kings.
John Dryden
An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star!
William 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
Fantastic fortune thou deceitful light,That cheats the weary traveler by night,Though on a precipice each step you tread,I am resolved to follow where you lead.
Aphra Behn
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,Rough-hew them how we will
William Shakespeare
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow worldLike a Colossus, and we petty menWalk under his huge legs and peep aboutTo find ourselves dishonorable graves.Men at some time are masters of their fates.The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our starsBut in ourselves, that we are underlings.
William Shakespeare
If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all.
William Shakespeare
Affliction is enamoured of thy parts, And thou art wedded to calamity.
William Shakespeare
Oh, I am fortune's fool!
William Shakespeare
Oh goodness infinite, goodness immense!That all this good of evil shall produce,And evil turn to good; more wonderfulThan that which by creation first brought forthLight out of darkness! Full of doubt I stand,Whether I should repent me now of sinBy me done, and occasioned; or rejoiceMuch more, that much more good thereof shall spring;To God more glory, more good-will to menFrom God, and over wrath grace shall abound.
John Milton
It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
William Ernest Henley
If God spares us as a father does his son, let us imitate God. It is natural for children to imitate their parents. Let us imitate God in this one thing: As God spares us, and passes by many failures, so let us be sparing in our censures of others; let us look upon the weaknesses and indiscretions of our brethren with...a more tender, compassionate eye. How much God bears with us!
Thomas Watson
There is in true grace an infinite circle: a man by thirsting receives, and receiving thirsts for more.
Thomas Shepard
Virtue and genuine graces in themselves speak what no words can utter.
William Shakespeare
Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,Yet Grace must still look so.
William Shakespeare
I have set my life upon a cast,And I will stand the hazard of the die.
William Shakespeare
Each new mornNew widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrowsStrike heaven on the face, that it resoundsAs if it felt with Scotland, and yelled outLike syllable of dolor.
William Shakespeare
All dark and comfortless.
William Shakespeare
Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.
William Shakespeare