John Webster

"Webster is not concerned with humanity. He is the poet of bile and brainstorm, the sweet singer of apoplexy; ideally, one feels, he would have had all his characters drowned in a sea of cold sweat. His muse drew nourishment from Bedlam, and might, a few centuries later, have done the same from Belsen."

"Is not old wine wholesomest, old pippins toothsomest, old wood burn brightest, old linen wash whitest? Old soldiers, sweethearts, are surest, and old lovers are soundest."

"I saw him going the way of all flesh."

"Vain the ambition of kings Who seek by trophies and dead things To leave a living name behind, And weave but nets to catch the wind."

"I dare truly and boldly say, that one years exercise therein to ingenious spirits, under able Masters, will produce more real and true fruit, than the studying Aristotelian Philosophy hath brought forth in many centuries. O that the Schools therefore would leave their idle, and fruitless speculations, and not be too proud to put their hands to the coals and furnace, where they might find ocular experiments to confute their fopperies, and produce effects that would be beneficial to all posterities."

"'T is just like a summer bird-cage in a garden,—the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out."

"Condemn you me for that the duke did love me? So may you blame some fair and crystal river For that some melancholic, distracted man Hath drown'd himself in 't."

"Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright, But look'd too near have neither heat nor light."

"Call for the robin redbreast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men."

"But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men, For with his nails he'll dig them up again."

"Prosperity doth bewitch men, seeming clear; But seas do laugh, show white, when rocks are near."

"Glories, like glowworms, afar off shine bright, But looked to near have neither heat nor light."

"Of what is't fools make such vain keeping? Sin their conception, their birth, weeping: Their life, a general mist of error, Their death, a hideous storm of terror."

"I know death hath ten thousand several doors For men to take their exits."

"Heaven-gates are not so highly arched As princes' palaces; they that enter there Must go upon their knees."

"Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle: she died young."

"Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust."

"Webster was much possessed by death And saw the skull beneath the skin."

"Der Ruhm ist wie das Glühwürmchen: Er leuchtet hell von Ferne, aber aus der Nähe betrachtet spendet er weder Wärme noch Licht."