All Quotes

"Neither go to a wedding nor a christening unbid."

"Affection is blind reason."

"To whom thy secret thou dost tell, to him thy freedom thou dost sell."

"There's fence against all things except death."

"He falls in the pit he digs for others."

"Sometimes an ill favored bitch gnaws a good chord."

"The wealth of a churchman God gives it, and the Devil takes it away."

"Appetite is better than surfeit."

"He will bless God, and love England ever after"

"The Netherlands have been for many years, as one may say, the very cockpit of Christendom."

"Words are the soul's embassadors, who go Abroad upon her errands to and fro; They are the sole expounders of the mind, And correspondence keep 'twist all mankind. They are those airy keys that ope (and wrest Sometimes) the locks and hinges of the breast. By them the heart makes sallies: wit and sense Belong to them: they are the quintescence Of those ideas which the thoughts distil, And so calcine and melt again, until They drop forth into accents; in whom lies The salt of fancy, and all faculties."

"'Tis only man can words create, And cut the air to sounds articulate By nature's special charter. Nay, speech can Make a shrewd discrepance 'twist man and man: It doth the gentleman from clown discover; And from a fool the grave philosopher; As Solon said to one in judgment weak, I thought thee wise until I heard thee speak."

"Words are the life of knowledge; they set free, And bring forth truth by way of midwif'ry: The activ'st creatures of the teeming brain, The judges who the inward man arraign: Reason's chief engine and artillery To batter error, and make falsehood fly; The cannons of the mind, who sometimes bounce Nothing but war, then peace again pronounce."

"Such is the strength of art, rough things to shape, And of rude commons rich enclosures make."

"This is brave Bear-Garden language!"

"By reading a man does as it were antedate his life, and makes himself contemporary with the ages past. And this way of running up beyond one's nativity is much better than Plato's pre-existence, because here a man knows something of the state, and is the wiser for it, which he is not in the other."

"A man may as well expect to grow stronger by always eating, as wiser by always reading. Too much over-charges nature, and turns more into disease than nourishment. 'Tis thought and digestion which makes books serviceable, and gives health and vigour to the mind."

"People's opinions of themselves are commonly legible in their countenances."

"Envy […], like a cold poison, […] benumbs and stupefies. And thus conscious as it were of its own impotence, it folds its arms in despair, and sits cursing in a corner."

"To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. How many feasible projects have miscarried by despondency, and been strangled in the birth by a cowardly imagination?"

"Knowledge is the consequence of time, and multitude of days are fittest to teach wisdom."

"A brave mind is always impregnable. True courage is the result of reasoning."

"I cannot but look upon the strange Instinct of this noisome and troublesome Creature a Louse, of searching out foul and nasty Clothes to harbor and breed in, as an Effect of divine Providence, design'd to deter Men and Women from Sluttishness and Sordidness."

"The use of plants is all our life long of that universal importance and concern that we can neither live nor subsist with any decency and convenience, or be said, indeed, to live at all without them. Whatsoever food is necessary to sustain us, whatsoever conteibutes to delight and refresh us, is supplied and brought forth out of that plentiful and abundant store. And ah! how much more innocent, sweet, and healthful is a table covered with those than with all the reeking flesh of butchered and slaughtered animals. Certainly man by nature was never made to be a carnivorous animal, nor is he armed at all for prey and rapine, with jagged and pointed teeth and crooked claws sharpened to rend and tear, but with gentle hands to gather fruit and vegetables, and with teeth to chew and eat them."

"In a calm sea every man is a pilot."

"Like blood, like good, and like agen make the happiest marriage."

"He speaks Bear-garden. That is, such rude and uncivil, or sordid and dirty language, as the rabble that frequent those sports, are wont to use."

"Money and friendship bribe justice. Beauty is potent, but money is omnipotent."

"Prate us but prade; it's money buys land Money begets money."

"If wishes were butter-cakes, beggars might bite. If wishes were thrushes, beggars would eat birds. If wishes would bide, beggars would ride."

"As full as a piper's bag; as a tick."

"I do not know who first emphasized the need for a clear understanding of the sense in which the term species is to be applied. In the second half of the seventeenth century Ray shows some degree of concern on this matter. In the introduction to the Historia Plantarum, 1686, he discusses some of the difficulties and lays down the principle that varieties which can be produced from the seed of the same plant are to be regarded as belonging to one species, being, I believe, the first to suggest this definition."

"He's as great a master of ill language as ever was bred at a Bear-Garden."

"A fox should not be of the jury at a goose's trial."

"Though blood be the best sauce for victory, yet must it not be more than the meat."

"Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of her sickness-broken body."

"He was one of a lean body and visage, as if his eager soul, biting for anger at the clog of his body, desired to fret a passage through it."

"Thus, as it is always darkest just before the day dawneth, so God useth to visit His servants with greatest afflictions when he intendeth their speedy advancement."

"Miracles are the swaddling-clothes of infant churches."

"There is a great difference between painting a face and not washing it."

"Often the cockloft is empty in those whom Nature hath built many stories high."

"By the same proportion that a penny saved is a penny gained, the preserver of books is a Mate for the Compiler of them."

"Many favors which God giveth us ravel out for want of hemming, through our own unthankfulness; for though prayer purchaseth blessings, giving praise doth keep the quiet possession of them."

"Music is nothing else but wild sounds civilised into time and tune."

"He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows."

"She commandeth her husband, in any equal matter, by constant obeying him."

"[T]hey which play with the devils rattles, will be brought by degrees to wield his sword[.]"

"One that will not plead that cause wherein his tongue must be confuted by his conscience."

"A little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery; but depth in that study brings him about again to our religion."

"But our captain counts the image of God — nevertheless his image — cut in ebony as if done in ivory, and in the blackest Moors he sees the representation of the King of Heaven."