"The oracles are dumb, No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell."

"Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail."

"Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold."

"No war, or battle's sound Was heard the world around. The idle spear and shield were high up hung."

"It was the winter wild While the Heav'n-born child All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies."

"This is the month, and this the happy morn, Wherein the Son of Heav'n's eternal King, Of wedded maid and virgin mother born, Our great redemption from above did bring; For so the holy sages once did sing, That He our deadly forfeit should release, And with His Father work us a perpetual peace."

"I neither oblige the belief of other person, nor overhastily subscribe mine own. Nor have I stood with others computing or collating years and chronologies, lest I should be vainly curious about the time and circumstance of things, whereof the substance is so much in doubt. By this time, like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at a far distance, true colours and shapes."

"Beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies."

"Have hung My dank and dropping weeds To the stern god of sea."

"What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste?"

"License they mean when they cry, Liberty! For who loves that must first be wise and good."

"That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp."

"That old man eloquent."

"As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye."

"Thy liquid notes that close the eye of day."

"O fairest flower! no sooner blown but blasted, Soft silken primrose fading timelessly."

"Such as may make thee search the coffers round."

"The end of learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love Him and imitate Him."

"Madam, methinks I see him living yet; So well your words his noble virtues praise, That all both judge you to relate them true, And to possess them, honour'd Margaret."

"For stories teach us, that liberty sought out of season, in a corrupt and degenerate age, brought Rome itself to a farther slavery: for liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need."

"Such bickerings to recount, met often in these our writers, what more worth is it than to chronicle the wars of kites or crows flocking and fighting in the air?"

"[Rhyme is] but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; ... Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme, ... as have also long since our best English tragedies, as... trivial and of no true musical delight; which [truly] consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory."

"But oh! as to embrace me she inclined, I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night."

"Methought I saw my late espousèd saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave."

"Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son"

"In mirth that after no repenting draws."

"Of which all Europe rings from side to side."

"Yet I argue not Against Heav'n's hand or will, nor bate one jot Of heart or hope; but still bear up, and steer Right onward."

"Cyriack, whose Grandsire on the Royal Bench Of British Themis, with no mean applause Pronounced and in his volumes taught our Laws, Which others at their Bar so often wrench"

"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones Forget not."

"Non est miserum esse caecum, miserum est caecitatem non posse ferre."

"Who best Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest; They also serve who only stand and wait."

"When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide Lodged with me useless."

"Peace hath her victories No less renowned than war."

"No man who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny that all men naturally were born free."

"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license."

"For such kind of borrowing as this, if it be not bettered by the borrower, among good authors is accounted Plagiarè."

"For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains, And disapproves that care, though wise in show, That with superfluous burden loads the day, And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains."

"New Presbyter is but Old Priest writ Large."

"Men of most renowned virtue have sometimes by transgressing most truly kept the law."

"Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam."

"Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live."

"Truth...never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth."

"So little care they of beasts to make them men, that by their sorcerous doctrine of formalities, they take the way to transform them out of Christian men into judaizing beasts. Had they but taught the land, or suffered it to be taught, as Christ would it should have been in all plenteous dispensation of the word, then the poor mechanic might have so accustomed his ear to good teaching, as to have discerned between faithful teachers and false. But now, with a most inhuman cruelty, they who have put out the people's eyes, reproach them of their blindness; just as the Pharisees their true fathers were wont, who could not endure that the people should be thought competent judges of Christ's doctrine, although we know they judged far better than those great rabbis: yet “this people,” said they, “that know not the law is accursed.”"

"I will not deny but that the best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words."

"His words ... like so many nimble and airy servitors trip about him at command."

"He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem."