William Davenant famous quotes

50 minutes ago

Honor is the moral conscience of the great.
-- William Davenant

#Army #Honor #Moral
Ambition is the mind's immodesty.
-- William Davenant

#Ambition #Mind
Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow Of slight beginnings to important ends.
-- William Davenant

#Fate #Important #Doe
For in a dearth of comforts, we art taught To be contented with the least.
-- William Davenant

#Art #Taught #Comfort
Generous souls Are still most subject to credulity.
-- William Davenant

#Soul #Stills #Subjects
To be rich be diligent; move on Like heav'ns great movers that enrich the earth; Whose moment's sloth would show the world undone; And make the spring straight bury all her birth. Rich are the diligent who can command Time--nature's stock.
-- William Davenant

#Spring #Moving #Sloth
Faith lights us through the dark to Deity.
-- William Davenant

#Faith #Dark #Light
How beautiful is sorrow when it is dressed by virgin innocence! it makes felicity in others seem deformed.
-- William Davenant

#Beautiful #Grief #Sorrow
Ambition's monstrous stomach does increase By eating, and it fears to starve, unless It still may feed, and all it sees devour; Ambition is not tir'd with toll nor cloy'd with power.
-- William Davenant

#Ambition #Tolls #May
Be not with honor's gilded baits beguil'd, Nor think ambition wise, because 'tis brave; For though we like it, as a forward child, 'Tis so unsound, her cradle is the grave.
-- William Davenant

#Wise #Children #Ambition
All slander must still be strangled in its birth, or time will soon conspire to make it strong enough to overcome the truth.
-- William Davenant

#Strong #Overcoming #Birth
Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run.
-- William Davenant

#Running #Speed
O harmless Death! whom still the valiant brave, The wise expect, the sorrowful invite, And all the good embrace, who know the grave A short dark passage to eternal light.
-- William Davenant

#Death #Wise #Dark
Had laws not been, we never had been blam'd; For not to know we sinn'd is innocence.
-- William Davenant

#Law #Innocence
Actions rare and sudden do commonly proceed from fierce necessity, of else from some oblique design, which is ashamed to show itself in the public road.
-- William Davenant

#Design #Action #Fierce
Anger is blood, poured and perplexed into froth; but malice is the wisdom of our wrath.
-- William Davenant

#Anger #Blood #Wrath
Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.
-- William Davenant

#Glasses #Perfect #Calamity
To a Mistress Dying Lover. YOUR beauty, ripe and calm and fresh As eastern summers are, Must now, forsaking time and flesh, Add light to some small star. Philosopher. Whilst she yet lives, were stars decay'd, Their light by hers relief might find; But Death will lead her to a shade Where Love is cold and Beauty blind. Lover. Lovers, whose priests all poets are, Think every mistress, when she dies, Is changed at least into a star: And who dares doubt the poet wise? Philosopher. But ask not bodies doom'd to die To what abode they go; Since Knowledge is but Sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.
-- William Davenant

#Summer #Wise #Stars
Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.
-- William Davenant

#Sorrow #Spy #Safe
Think not ambition wise, because 't is brave.
-- William Davenant

#Wise #Ambition #Thinking
It is the wit and policy of sin to hate those we have abused.
-- William Davenant

#Hate #Abuse #Sin
Fame, like the river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off.
-- William Davenant

#Rivers #Afar #Fame
How much pleasure they lose (and even the pleasures of heroic poesy are not unprofitable) who take away the liberty of a poet, and fetter his feet in the shackles of a historian.
-- William Davenant

#Feet #Liberty #Heroic
Aubade THE lark now leaves his wat'ry nest, And climbing shakes his dewy wings. He takes this window for the East, And to implore your light he sings- Awake, awake! the morn will never rise Till she can dress her beauty at your eyes. The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, The ploughman from the sun his season takes, But still the lover wonders what they are Who look for day before his mistress wakes. Awake, awake! break thro' your veils of lawn! Then draw your curtains, and begin the dawn!
-- William Davenant

#Stars #Eye #Light
The assembled souls of all that men held wise.
-- William Davenant

#Wise #Men #Soul
Praise and Prayer PRAISE is devotion fit for mighty minds, The diff'ring world's agreeing sacrifice; Where Heaven divided faiths united finds: But Prayer in various discord upward flies. For Prayer the ocean is where diversely Men steer their course, each to a sev'ral coast; Where all our interests so discordant be That half beg winds by which the rest are lost. By Penitence when we ourselves forsake, 'Tis but in wise design on piteous Heaven; In Praise we nobly give what God may take, And are, without a beggar's blush, forgiven.
-- William Davenant

#Wise #Prayer #Ocean
All jealousy must be strangled in its birth...
-- William Davenant

#Gratitude #Birth
What one cannot, another can.
-- William Davenant

#Ability
Go! dive into the Southern Sea, and when Th'ast found, to trouble the nice sight of men, A swelling pearl, and such whose single worth Boasts all the wonders which the seas bring forth, Give it Endymion's love, whose ev'ry tear Would more enrich the skilful jeweller.
-- William Davenant

#Nice #Men #Jewels

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