William Davenant Quotes

Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.

It is the wit and policy of sin to hate those we have abused.

All slander must still be strangled in its birth, or time will soon conspire to make it strong enough to overcome the truth.

Fame, like the river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off.

Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.

Honor is the moral conscience of the great.

Think not ambition wise, because 't is brave.

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.

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.

Generous souls Are still most subject to credulity.

Had laws not been, we never had been blam'd; For not to know we sinn'd is innocence.

What one cannot, another can.

How beautiful is sorrow when it is dressed by virgin innocence! it makes felicity in others seem deformed.

For in a dearth of comforts, we art taught To be contented with the least.

All jealousy must be strangled in its birth.

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.

Ambition is the mind's immodesty.

Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run.

Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow Of slight beginnings to important ends.

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.

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.

The assembled souls of all that men held wise.

Faith lights us through the dark to Deity.

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.

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.