Quotes by English Authors - Page 5

Get you gone, you dwarf,You minimus of hindering knotgrass made,You bead, you acorn!
William Shakespeare
My feathered friends were so much to me that I am constantly tempted to make this sketch of my first years a book about birds and little else.
William Henry Hudson
My man's as true as steel.
William Shakespeare
The virtue of prosperity is temperance the virtue of adversity is fortitude.
Francis Bacon
A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
That perfect tranquility of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library.
Aphra Behn
POLONIUS : My Lord, I will use them according to their desert.HAMLET : God's bodykins man, better. Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
William Shakespeare
Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.
William Penn
The lame man who keeps the right road outstrips the runner who takes a wrong one ... the more active and swift the latter is the further he will go astray.
Francis Bacon
Good madonna, give me leave toprove you a fool.
William Shakespeare
He that asks me what heaven is, means not to hear me, but to silence me; He knows I cannot tell him; when I meet him there, I shall be able to tell him, and then he will be as able to tell me; yet then we shall be but able to tell one another, this, this that we enjoy is heaven, but the tongues of angels, the tongues of glorified saints, shall not be able to express what that heaven is; for, even in heaven our faculties shall be finite.
John Donne
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
I wish you all the joy that you can wish.
William Shakespeare
It's madness the sheep to talk peace with the wolf
Thomas Fuller
If I were to kiss you then go to hell, I would. So then I can brag with the devils I saw heaven without ever entering it.
William Shakespeare
Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it.
Francis Bacon
I must be cruel only to be kind.
William Shakespeare
Those who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write,Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite.
John Dryden
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;Make dust our paper and with rainy eyesWrite sorrow on the bosom of the earth,Let's choose executors and talk of wills
William Shakespeare
He was, as every truly great poet has ever been, a good man; but finding it impossible to realize his own aspirations, either in religion or politics, or society, he gave up his heart to the living spirit and light within him, and avenged himself on the world by enriching it with this record of his own transcendental ideal.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
We could be cowards if we had courage enough.
Thomas Fuller
Ay every inch a king.
William Shakespeare
It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
Thomas Paine
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,His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchelAnd shining morning face, creeping like snailUnwillingly to school. And then the lover,Sighing like furnace, with a woeful balladMade to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,Seeking the bubble reputationEven in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,In fair round belly with good capon lined,With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,Full of wise saws and modern instances;And so he plays his part. The sixth age shiftsInto the lean and slippered pantaloon,With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wideFor his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,Turning again toward childish treble, pipesAnd whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,That ends this strange eventful history,Is second childishness and mere oblivion,Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
William Shakespeare
Weaving spiders, come not here, Hence, you long legged spinners, hence! Beetles black, approach not here, worm nor snail, do no offense.
William Shakespeare
Love built on beauty soon as beauty dies.
John Donne
But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth, nor again that when it is found it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself.
Francis Bacon
...Who could refrain,tThat had a heart to love, and in that hearttCourage to make love known?
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
Come Sleep! Oh Sleep the certain knot of peace The baiting-place of wit the balm of woe The poor man's wealth the prisoner's release The indifferent judge between the high and low.
Sir Philip Sidney
If all the year were playing holidays To sport would be as tedious as to work.
William Shakespeare
Weep no more lady weep no more Thy sorrow is in vain For violets plucked the sweetest showers Will ne'er make grow again.
Thomas Percy
Those that much covet are with gain so fond,For what they have not, that which they possessThey scatter and unloose it from their bond,And so, by hoping more, they have but less;Or, gaining more, the profit of excessIs but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain.
William Shakespeare
No man was ever yet a great poet, without at the same time being a profound philosopher.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power, or of the hands. For have not some books continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, and cities have been decayed and demolished?
Francis Bacon
No longer mourn for me when I am deadThan you shall hear the surly sullen bellGive warning to the world that I am fledFrom this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell;Nay, if you read this line, remember notThe hand that writ it; for I love you so,That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,If thinking on me then would make you woe.
William Shakespeare
What's done cannot be undone.
William Shakespeare
There is no sinner like a young saint.
Aphra Behn
Readers may be divided into four classes: I. Sponges, who absorb all they read, and return it nearly in the same state, only a little dirtied. II. Sand-glasses, who retain nothing, and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time. III. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read. IV. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Be strong, live happy and love, but first of allHim whom to love is to obey, and keepHis great command!
John Milton
When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul,Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-whit! To-who!—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. When all aloud the wind doe blow,And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl,To-whit! To-who!—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.
William Shakespeare
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,Guiltie of dust and sin.
George Herbert
Many lose heaven because they are ashamed to go in a fool's coat thither.
William Gurnall
The rest is silence.
William Shakespeare
Little pitchers have wide ears.
George Herbert
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they might have been.
William Hazlitt
If a man wishes to ensure the bad opinion of others, his best course probably is to be honest about himself.
William Hurrell Mallock
O my love, my wife!Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breathHath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
William Shakespeare
Go wisely and slowly. Those who rush stumble and fall.
William Shakespeare
Better halfe a loafe than no bread.
William Camden
Now public business takes up so much of my time that I must get time a Sundays or a nights to look after my own matters.
Samuel Pepys
Of four infernal rivers that disgorge/ Into the burning Lake their baleful streams;/Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,/Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;/Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud/ Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon/ Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage./ Far off from these a slow and silent stream,/ Lethe the River of Oblivion rolls/ Her wat'ry Labyrinth whereof who drinks,/ Forthwith his former state and being forgets,/ Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
John Milton
Just as the soul animates the body, so, in a way, meaning breathes life into a word.
John of Salisbury
I profess myself an enemy to all other joys, which the most precious square of sense possesses, and find I am alone felicitate in your dear highness love.
William Shakespeare
And shake the yoke of inauspicious starsFrom this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!
William Shakespeare
The small amount of foolery wise men have makes a great show.
William Shakespeare
To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus...
William Shakespeare
Those blessings are sweetest that are won with prayer and worn with thanks.
Thomas Goodwin
Tis but a base ignoble mind That mounts no higher than a bird can soar.
William Shakespeare
...I learned the lesson that, even after the revolution, cool, handsome and confident is always going to beat weird-looking and needy.
Alexei Sayle