Quotes by English Authors - Page 44

This hand shall never more come near thee with such friendship
William Shakespeare
Where a man cannot fitly play his own part; if he have not a friend, he may quit the stage.
Francis Bacon
Friendship is the golden thread that ties the heart of all the world.
John Evelyn
Thus the Government of our Virtue was broken and I exchang'd the Place of Friend for that unmusical harsh-sounding Title of Whore.
Daniel Defoe
(Response to King Erik XIV of Sweden's proposal of marriage:)"[W]hile we perceive ... the zeal and love of your mind towards us is not diminished, yet in part we are grieved that we cannot gratify your Serene Highness with the same kind of affection. And that indeed does not happen because we doubt in any way of your love and honour, but, as often we have testified both in words and writing, that we have never yet conceived a feeling of that kind of affection towards anyone.We therefore beg your Serene Highness again and again that you be pleased to set a limit to your love, that it advance not beyond the laws of friendship for the present nor disregard them in the future. ... We certainly think that if God ever direct our hearts to consideration of marriage we shall never accept or choose any absent husband how powerful and wealthy a Prince soever. But that we are not to give you an answer until we have seen your person is so far from the thing itself that we never even considered such a thing. I have always given both to your brother ... and also to your ambassador likewise the same answer with scarcely any variation of the words, that we do not conceive in our heart to take a husband but highly commend this single life, and hope that your Serene Highness will no longer spend time in waiting for us.
Elizabeth I
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;But do not dull thy palm with entertainmentOf each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade.
William Shakespeare
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,All losses are restored and sorrows end.
William Shakespeare
I have unclasp'd to thee the book even of my secret soul.
William Shakespeare
So furiously each other did assayle, As if their soules they would attonce haue rent Out of their brests, that streames of bloud did rayle Adowne, as if their springes of life were spent; That all the ground with purple bloud was sprent, And all their armours staynd with bloudie gore, Yet scarcely once to breath would they relent, So mortall was their malice and so sore,Become of fayned friendship which they vow'd afore.
Edmund Spenser
Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core, in my heart of heart, as I do thee.
William Shakespeare
May I a small house and large garden have;And a few friends,And many books, both true.
Abraham Cowley
Be a friend to thyself, and others will be so too.
Thomas Fuller
The distant soul can shake the distant friend's soul and make the longing felt, over untold miles.
John Masefield
A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably
William Penn
Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old authors to read.
Francis Bacon
The best mirror is an old friend.
George Herbert
Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find.
William Shakespeare
...what care I for words? Yet words do wellWhen he that speaks them pleases those that hear.
William Shakespeare
The only shame is the sin.
Aphra Behn
Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens to the which our wills are gardeners.
William Shakespeare
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;This sensible warm motion to becomeA kneaded clod; and the delighted spiritTo bathe in fiery floods, or to resideIn thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,And blown with restless violence round aboutThe pendent world; or to be worse than worstOf those that lawless and incertain thoughtImagine howling: 'tis too horrible!The weariest and most loathed worldly lifeThat age, ache, penury and imprisonmentCan lay on nature is a paradiseTo what we fear of death.
William Shakespeare
Fear is a numbing thing when there is no recourse to hope or escape...
William Horwood
O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?And shall I couple Hell?
William Shakespeare
I could a tale unfold whose lightest wordWould harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,Thy knotted and combined locks to part,And each particular hair to stand on endLike quills upon the fretful porpentine.But this eternal blazon must not beTo ears of flesh and blood.List, list, O list!
William Shakespeare
We fear men so much, because we fear God so little.
William Gurnall
Screw your courage to the sticking-place
William Shakespeare
He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.
William Hazlitt
In time we hate that which we often fear.
William Shakespeare
Celestial light, shine inward...that I may see and tell of things invisible to mortal sight
John Milton
For I was reared in the great city, pent with cloisters dim,and saw naught lovely but the sky and stars.But thou, my babe! Shalt wander like a breezeBy lakes and sandy shores, beneath the cragsOf ancient mountains, and beneath the clouds,Which image in their bulk both lakes and shoresAnd mountain crags: so shall thou see and hearThe lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy GodUtters, who from eternity doth teachHimself in all, and al things in himselfGreat universal teacher! He shall moldThy spirit and by giving , make it ask.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
God loved us before he made us and his love has never diminished and never shall.
Julian of Norwich
The least learned, for the most part, have been always most ready to write.
Roger Ascham
For books are not absolutely dead things, but... do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand unless warriors be used, as good almost kill a Man a good Book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills Reason itself, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.John MiltonAreopagitica
John Milton
You'll grow devilish fat upon this paper-diet!
William Congreve
Many a man lives a burden to the Earth, but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
John Milton
Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.
Thomas Paine
What a glut of books! Who can read them?
Robert Burton
Woe be to him that reads but one book.
George Herbert
Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.
William Shakespeare
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted ...but to weigh and consider.
Francis Bacon
Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our
William Hazlitt
And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it.
William Shakespeare
A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
John Milton
Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Francis Bacon
For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.
John Milton
Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.
Francis Bacon
There is more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of by your philosophy.
William Shakespeare
There are more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of by your philosophy.
William Shakespeare
Doctrine once sown strikes deep its root, and respect for antiquity influences all men.
William Harvey
Nay, the same Solomon the king, although he excelled in the glory of treasure and magnificent buildings, of shipping and navigation, of service and attendance, of fame and renown, and the like, yet he maketh no claim to any of those glories, but only to the glory of inquisition of truth; for so he saith expressly, "The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out;" as if, according to the innocent play of children, the Divine Majesty took delight to hide His works, to the end to have them found out; and as if kings could not obtain a greater honour than to be God's playfellows in that game
Francis Bacon
Later times have laid all the blame upon the Goths and Vandals, but, however unwilling the partizans of the Christian system may be to believe or to acknowledge it, it is nevertheless true, that the age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.There was more knowledge in the world before that period, than for many centuries afterwards; and as to religious knowledge, the Christian system, as already said, was only another species of mythology; and the mythology to which it succeeded, was a corruption of an ancient system of t
Thomas Paine
The heart of animals is the foundation of their life, the sovereign of everything within them, the sun of their microcosm, that upon which all growth depends, from which all power proceeds.
William Harvey
If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics...
Roger Bacon
Glendower: I can call the spirits from the vasty deep.Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;But will they come, when you do call for them?
William Shakespeare
A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion
Francis Bacon
Wonder is the seed of knowledge
Francis Bacon
POLONIUS My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently.HAMLET Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?POLONIUS By th'mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed.HAMLET Methinks it is like a weasel.POLONIUS It is backed like a weasel.HAMLET Or like a whale?POLONIUS Very like a whale.HAMLET Then I will come to my mother by and by. - They fool me to the top of my bent. - I will come by and by.
William Shakespeare
Afore me! It is so very late,That we may call it early by and by.
William Shakespeare
she shall scant show well that now shows best.
William Shakespeare
Nay, 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping. All the kind of the Launces have this very fault. I have received my proportion, like the prodigious son, and am going with Sir Proteus to the Imperial's court. I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured dog that lives. My mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone, a very pebble stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog. A Jew would have wept to have seen our parting. Why, my grandam, having no eyes, look you, wept herself blind at my parting. Nay, I'll show you the manner of it. This shoe is my father. No, this left shoe is my father. No, no, this left shoe is my mother. Nay, that cannot be so neither. Yes, it is so, it is so -- it hath the worser sole. This shoe with the hole in it is my mother, and this my father. A vengeance on't! There 'tis. Now, sir, this staff is my sister, for, look you, she is as white as a lily and as small as a wand. This hat is Nan, our maid. I am the dog. No, the dog is himself, and I am the dog -- O, the dog is me, and I am myself. Ay, so, so. Now come I to my father: 'Father, your blessing.' Now should not the shoe speak a word for weeping. Now should I kiss my father -- well, he weeps on. Now come I to my mother. O, that she could speak now like a wood woman! Well, I kiss her -- why, there 'tis: here's my mother's breath up and down. Now come I to my sister; mark the moan she makes. Now the dog all this while sheds not a tear nor speaks a word!
William Shakespeare