Quotes by English Authors - Page 3

All the tales of miracles, with which the Old and New Testament are filled, are fit only for impostors to preach and fools to believe.
Thomas Paine
Give an inch he'll take an ell.
Thomas Hobbes
Well, I must do’t. Away, my disposition, and possess me Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turn’d, Which quier’d with my drum, into a pipe Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice That babies lull asleep! The smiles of knaves Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys’ tears take up The glasses of my sight! A beggar’s tongue Make motion through my lips, and my arm’d knees, Who bow’d but in my stirrup, bend like his That hath receiv’d an alms! I will not do’t, Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth, And by my body’s action teach my mind A most inherent baseness.
William Shakespeare
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.
William Shakespeare
He who reigns within himself and rules his passions desires and fears is more than a king.
John Milton
Heaven is never deaf but when man's heart is dumb.
Francis Quarles
Words are the only things that last for ever.
William Hazlitt
At his funeral the priest's words applied signally to him: 'The Christian Brothers are a body of men who live without luxury, labour without emolument, and die without notice, that they might stamp God's image on the soul of youth. That surely is a splendid vocation.
Edmund Campion
We number nothing that we spend for you;Our duty is so rich, so infinite,That we may do it still without accompt.Vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face,That we, like savages, may worship it.
William Shakespeare
He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.
William Hazlitt
God made them as stubble to our swords.
Oliver Cromwell
Life... is a paradise to what we fear of death.
William Shakespeare
Make the doors upon a woman's wit,and it will out at the casement;shut that, and 'twill out at the key-hole;stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.
William Shakespeare
It is a poore Center of a Mans Actions, Himselfe.
Francis Bacon
The summer's flower is to the summer sweetThough to itself it only live and die
William Shakespeare
Mine honor is my life; both grow in one.Take honor from me, and my life is done.
William Shakespeare
I have no spurTo prick the sides of my intent, but onlyVaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itselfAnd falls on the other.
William Shakespeare
Every one can master a grief but he that has it.
William Shakespeare
Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.
William Hazlitt
She's beautiful and therefore to be woo'd: She is a woman therefore to be won.
William Shakespeare
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd slave of care The death of each day's life sore labour's bath Balm of hurt minds great nature's second course Chief nourisher in life's feast.
William Shakespeare
Stiff in opinion always in the wrong.
John Dryden
Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.
William Shakespeare
A good life fears not life nor death.
Thomas Fuller
That such a slave as this should wear a sword,Who wears no honesty. Such smiling rogues as these,Like rats, oft bite the holy cords atwainWhich are too intrinse t' unloose; smooth every passionThat in the natures of their lords rebel,Being oil to the fire, snow to the colder moods,Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaksWith every gale and vary of their mastersKnowing naught, like dogs, but following.
William Shakespeare
Give me that man That is not passion's slave.
William Shakespeare
No legacy is so rich as honesty.
William Shakespeare
Tis Fate that flings the dice,And as she flingsOf kings makes peasants,And of peasants kings.
John Dryden
Light God's eldest daughter is a principal beauty in a building.
Thomas Fuller
And will 'a not come again? And will 'a not come again? No, no, he is dead, Go to thy death bed: He will never come again.
William Shakespeare
Come and trip it as ye go On the light fantastic toe.
John Milton
He that dies pays all debts.
William Shakespeare
O! Learn to read what silent love hath writ:to hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.
William Shakespeare
Riches are for spending.
Francis Bacon
Friar Laurence:O, mickle is the powerful grace that liesIn herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities: For nought to vile that on the earth doth live, But to the earth some special good doth give; nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use, Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse: Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime's by action dignified.
William Shakespeare
A fox should not be of the jury at a goose's trial.
Thomas Fuller
Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.
John Milton
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
In fair weather prepare for foul.
Thomas Fuller
The folly of one man is the fortune of another.
Sir Francis Bacon
Alack, when once our grace we have forgot,Nothing goes right; we would and we would not.
William Shakespeare
All the world's a stage And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances And one man in his time plays many parts.
William Shakespeare
I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it.
William Shakespeare
As full of spirit as the month of May.
William Shakespeare
Maybe you care deeply about the environment or other global issues, or you feel strongly about your local region or community, but you just don't see how local money can help. I hope that this pamphlet will show you connections between what you care about and 'the money problem'.
John Rogers
Now to enjoy the treasures of God in the similitude of God, is the most perfect blessedness God could devise. For the treasures of God are the most perfect treasures, and the manner of God is the most perfect manner.
Thomas Traherne
I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.
William Shakespeare
Great and good are seldom the same man.
Thomas Fuller
If your desires be endless your cares and fears will be so too.
Thomas Fuller
If there were dreams to sell, what would you buy?
Thomas Lovell Beddoes
One sip of this will bathe the drooping spirits in delight, beyond the bliss of dreams.
John Milton
[F]rom my years of understanding ... I happily chose this kind of life in which I yet live [i.e., unmarried], which I assure you for my own part hath hitherto best contented myself and I trust hath been most acceptable to God. From the which if either ambition of high estate offered to me in marriage by the pleasure and appointment of my prince ... or if the eschewing of the danger of my enemies or the avoiding of the peril of death ... could have drawn or dissuaded me from this kind of life, I had not now remained in this estate wherein you see me. But so constant have I always continued in this determination ... yet is it most true that at this day I stand free from any other meaning that either I have had in times past or have at this present.
Elizabeth I
Ambition should be made from sterner stuff.
William Shakespeare
Praise your children openly, reprove them secretly.
William Cecil
I long for scenes where man hath never trod A place where woman never smiled or wept There to abide with my Creator, God, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie The grass below—above the vaulted sky.
John Clare
No Spring nor Summer beauty hath such grace As I have seen in one Autumnal face.
John Donne
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.
William Shakespeare
It is excellent / To have a giant's strenght / But it is tyrannous / To use it like a giant(Isabella)
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
Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?
Thomas Love Peacock