Quotes by English Authors - Page 40

O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace.
William Shakespeare
I added, that whoever the woman was that had an estate, and would give it up to be the slave of a great man, that woman was a fool, and must be fit for nothing but a beggar; that it was my opinion a woman was as fit to govern and enjoy her own estate without a man as a man was without a woman; and that, if she had a mind to gratify herself as to sexes, she might entertain a man as a man does a mistress; that while she was thus single she was her own, and if she gave away that power she merited to be as miserable as it was possible that any creature could be.
Daniel Defoe
there is little difference between man and beast, but what ambition and glory makes.
Margaret Cavendish
but in Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and chreerful life, free from anxieties; neither apprehending want himself, nor vexed with the endless complaints of his wife?
Thomas More
The education of youth belongs to the priests, yet they do not take so much care of instructing them in letters, as in forming their minds and manners aright; they use all possible methods to infuse, very early, into the tender and flexible minds of children, such opinions as are both good in themselves and will be useful to their country, for when deep impressions of these things are made at that age, they follow men through the whole course of their lives, and conduce much to preserve the peace of the government, which suffers by nothing more than by vices that rise out of ill opinions.
Thomas More
A godly man in the midst of the waves and storms that he meets with can see the glory of heaven before him and so contents himself. One drop of the sweetness of heaven is enough to take away all the sourness and bitterness of all the afflictions in the world. We know that one drop of sourness, or one drop of gall will make bitter a great deal of it; but if you put a spoonful of gall into a cup of sugar, it will embitter that. Now it is otherwise in heaven: one drop of sweetness will sweeten a great deal of sour affliction, but a great deal of sourness and gall will not embitter a soul who sees the glory of heaven that is to come.
Jeremiah Burroughs
If it be a point of humanity for man to bring health and comfort to man, and especially to mitigate and assuage the grief of others, and by taking from them the sorrow and heaviness of life to restore them to joy, that is to say, to pleasure, why may it not then be said that nature does provoke every man to do the same to himself?
Thomas More
Every creature thinks itself best in its own element, that is the place it thrives in, and enjoys its happiness in; now Christ is the element of a Christian.
Richard Sibbes
Heaven is not heaven without Christ. It is better to be in any place with Christ than to be in heaven itself without him. All delicacies without Christ are but as a funeral banquet. Where the master of the feast is away, there is nothing but solemnness. What is all without Christ? I say the joys of heaven are not the joys of heaven without Christ; he is the very heaven of heaven.
Richard Sibbes
It should be the art of Christians to present death as a passage to a better life, to labour to bring our souls into such a condition, as to think death not to be a death to us, but the death of itself. Death dies when I die, and I begin to live when I die. It is a sweet passage to life. We never live till we die.
Richard Sibbes
The Spirit of Love, wherever it is, is its own blessing and happiness, because it is the truth and reality of God in the soul; and therefore is in the same joy of life, and is the same good to itself everywhere and on every occasion. Would you know the blessing of all blessings? It is this God of Love dwelling in your soul, and killing every root of bitterness, which is the pain and torment of every earthly, selfish love. For all wants are satisfied, all disorders of nature are removed, no life is any longer a burden, every day is a day of peace, everything you meet becomes a help to you, because everything you see or do is all done in the sweet, gentle element of Love.
William Law
...there is more good in contentment, than there is in the thing that you would fain have to cure your discontent...
Jeremiah Burroughs
Silence is the herald of joy
William Shakespeare
Let all thy joys be as the month of May.
Francis Quarles
BOYETA mark! O, mark but that mark! A mark, says my lady!Let the mark have a prick in't, to mete at, if it may be.MARIAWide o' the bow hand! i' faith, your hand is out.COSTARDIndeed, a' must shoot nearer, or he'll ne'er hit the clout.BOYETAn if my hand be out, then belike your hand is in.COSTARDThen will she get the upshoot by cleaving the pin.MARIACome, come, you talk greasily; your lips grow foul.COSTARDShe's too hard for you at pricks, sir: challenge her to bowl.BOYETI fear too much rubbing. Good night, my good owl.Exeunt BOYET and MARIA
William Shakespeare
He eats nothing but doves, love, and that breeds hot blood, and hot blood beget hot thoughts, and hot thoughts beget hot deeds, and hot deeds is love.
William Shakespeare
Well, in that hit you miss. She'll not be hitWith Cupid's arrow. She hath Dian's wit,And, in strong proff of chastity well armed,From Love's weak childish bow she lives uncharmed. She will not stay the siege of loving terms,Nor bide th' encounter of assailing eyes,Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold.O, she is rich in beauty; only poorThat, when she dies, with dies her store.Act 1,Scene 1, lines 180-197
William Shakespeare
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul; my soul the father: and these two beget a generation of still-breeding thoughts, and these same thoughts people this little world.
William Shakespeare
...that in former ages they had been as wise as they are in this present, nay, wiser; for, said they, many in this age do think their forefathers have been fools, by which they prove themselves to be such.
Margaret Cavendish
...that much gold, and great store of riches makes them mad, insomuch as they endeavour to destroy each other...
Margaret Cavendish
What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awake, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
How true is the observation that unrequited love turns to deepest hate.
Samuel Richardson
That our affections kill us not, nor dye.
John Donne
This is the very ecstasy of love,Whose violent property fordoes itselfAnd leads the will to desperate undertakingsAs oft as any passion under heavenThat does afflict our natures.
William Shakespeare
Where true Love burns Desire is Love's pure flame;It is the reflex of our earthly frame,That takes its meaning from the nobler part,And but translates the language of the heart.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
A bride, before a "Good-night" could be said,Should vanish from her clothes into her bed,As souls from bodies steal, and are not spied.But now she's laid; what though she be?Yet there are more delays, for where is he?He comes and passeth through sphere after sphere;First her sheets, then her arms, then anywhere.Let not this day, then, but this night be thine;Thy day was but the eve to this, O Valentine.
John Donne
Here lies a she sun, and a he moon there;She gives the best light to his sphere;Or each is both, and all, and soThey unto one another nothing owe;And yet they do, but areSo just and rich in that coin which they pay,That neither would, nor needs forbear, nor stay;Neither desires to be spared nor to spare.They quickly pay their debt, and thenTake no acquittances, but pay again;They pay, they give, they lend, and so let fallNo such occasion to be liberal.More truth, more courage in these two do shine,Than all thy turtles have and sparrows, Valentine.
John Donne
He which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart, his passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse. We would not die in that man's company that fears his fellowship, to die with us.
William Shakespeare
Macbeth:If we should fail?Lady Macbeth:We fail?But screw your courage to the sticking place,And we'll not fail.
William Shakespeare
Many would be cowards if they had courage enough.
Thomas Fuller
Dear love, for nothing less than theeWould I have broke this happy dream;It was a themeFor reason, much too strong for fantasy,Therefore thou wak'd'st me wisely; yetMy dream thou brok'st not, but continued'st it.Thou art so true that thoughts of thee sufficeTo make dreams truths, and fables histories;Enter these arms, for since thou thought'st it best,Not to dream all my dream, let's act the rest.
John Donne
The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.
William Shakespeare
O brave new world,That has such people in ’t!-Miranda
William Shakespeare
The world loves to be amused by hollow professions, to be deceived by flattering appearances, to live in a state of hallucination; and can forgive everything but the plain, downright, simple, honest truth.
William Hazlitt
The world dread nothing so much as being convinced of their errors.
William Hazlitt
Be thine own palace, or the world's thy jail.
John Donne
As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily wound. There is more sense in that than in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving.
William Shakespeare
Some of us believe that God is almighty, and can do everything; and that he is all wise, and may do everything; but that he is all love, and will do everything— there we draw back.
Julian of Norwich
The pow'r I have on you is to spare you / The malice towards you, to forgive you. Posthumus
William Shakespeare
It is excellent / To have a giant's strenght / But it is tyrannous / To use it like a giant(Isabella)
William Shakespeare
For to be wise and love exceeds man's might.
William Shakespeare
No more light answers. Let our officersHave note what we purpose. I shall breakThe cause of our expedience to the QueenAnd get her leave to part. For not aloneThe death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches,Do strongly speak to us, but the letters tooOf many our contriving friends in RomePetition us at home. Sextus PompeiusHath given the dare to Caesar and commandsThe empire of the sea. Our slippery people,Whose love is never linked to the deserverTill his deserts are past, begin to throwPompey the Great and all his dignitiesUpon his son, who - high in name and power,Higher than both in blood and life - stands upFor the main soldier; whose quality, going on,The sides o' th' world may danger. Much is breedingWhich, like the courser's hair, hath yet but lifeAnd not a serpent's poison.
William Shakespeare
In Antiochus and his daughter you have heard of monstrous lust the due and just reward; In Pericles, his queen, and daughter, seen, Although assailed with fortune fierce and keen, Virtue preserved from fell destruction's blast, Led on by heaven, and crowned with joy at last.
William Shakespeare
You are all too rich to be happy, child. For must not each of you be the constitutions of your family marry to be still richer? People who know in what their main excellence consists are not to be blamed (are they?) for cultivating and improving what they think most valuable? Is true happiness any part of your family-view?—So far from it, that none of your family but yourself could be happy were they not rich. So let them fret on, grumble and grudge, and accumulate; and wondering what ails them that they have not happiness when they have riches, think the cause is want of more; and so go on heaping up till Death, as greedy an accumulator as themselves, gathers them into his garner!
Samuel Richardson
Of all the people I have ever known you are the only one I don't know.
William Henry Hudson
They do not love, that do not show their love.
William Shakespeare
We should pray that God would enrich his ordinance with his presence; that he would make the sacrament effectual to all those holy ends and purposes for which he hath appointed it; that it may be the feast of our graces, and the funeral of our corruptions; that it may not only be a sign to represent, but an instrument to convey, Christ to us, and a seal to assure us of our heavenly jointure [union].
Thomas Watson
He has seen and felt how solemn a thing it was to approach the gate of death, to enter the presence of God; and from that awful point of vision, he has contemplated the world, and life, and human responsibility, as they are; and he has come back like a spirit from another sphere, clothed with all the solemnities of eternity; to live now as one soon in reality to be there.
Octavius Winslow
Self is the only oil that makes the chariot-wheels of the hypocrite move in all religious concerns.
Thomas Brooks
Thou, my slave,As thou report'st thyself, was then her servant,And for thou wast a spirit too delicateTo act her earthy and abhorred commands,Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,By help of her more potent ministersAnd in her most unmitigable rage,Into a cloven pine, within which riftImprisoned thou didst painfully remainA dozen years; within which space she diedAnd left thee there, where thou didst vent thy groansAs fast as mill wheels strike.
William Shakespeare
Lovers and madmen have such seething brainsSuch shaping fantasies, that apprehendMore than cool reason ever comprehends.
William Shakespeare
Where shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly 's done, when the battle 's lost and won
William Shakespeare
Were I the Moor I would not be Iago.In following him I follow but myself;Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,But seeming so for my peculiar end.For when my outward action doth demonstrateThe native act and figure of my heartIn compliment extern, ’tis not long afterBut I will wear my heart upon my sleeveFor daws to peck at. I am not what I am
William Shakespeare
Kindness and good nature unite men more effectually and with greater strength than any agreements whatsoever, since thereby the engagements of men's hearts become stronger than the bond and obligation of words.
Thomas More
Banks do not create money for the public good. They are businesses owned by private shareholders. Their purpose is to make a profit.
John Rogers
There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,Doing more murder in this loathsome world,Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.
William Shakespeare
ROMEOThere is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,Doing more murders in this loathsome world,Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none.Farewell: buy food, and get thyself in flesh.Come, cordial and not poison, go with meTo Juliet's grave; for there must I use thee.
William Shakespeare
Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.
Aphra Behn
Money is a great servant but a bad master.
Francis Bacon
By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, but music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night and his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
William Shakespeare