Quotes to inspire and reflect

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, That Time will come and take my love away. This thought is as a death, which cannot choose But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced The rich proud cost of outworn buried age, When sometime lofty towers I see down-rased And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; When I have seen the hungry ocean gain Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main, Increasing store with loss and loss with store.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow.

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rime.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end.

For nimble thought can jump both sea and land.

Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass, And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye, When love, converted from the thing it was, Shall reasons find of settled gravity.

Be thou the tenth Muse.

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud; Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. All men make faults.

Full many a glorious morning have I seen.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear times’ waste.

For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries.

Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee.

The painful warrior famoused for fight, After a thousand victories, once foil’d, Is from the books of honor razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toil’d.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Everything that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment.

Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly? Sweets with sweet war not, joy delights in joy.

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee Calls back the lovely April of her prime.

From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty’s rose might never die.

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field.

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steer’d.

Hang there like fruit, my soul, Till the tree die!

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages; Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Quiet consummation have; And renowned be thy grave!

I wear not My dagger in my mouth.

Society is no comfort To one not sociable.

An angel! or, if not, An earthly paragon!

Weariness Can snore upon the flint when resty sloth Finds the down pillow hard.

Slander, Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue Outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath Rides on the posting winds and doth belie All corners of the world.

I have not slept one wink.

O! for a horse with wings!

The game is up.

Some griefs are med’cinable.

As chaste as unsunn’d snow.

Hark! hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings, And Phoebus ’gins arise, His steeds to water at those springs On chalic’d flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes: With everything that pretty is, My lady sweet, arise.

The sad companion, dull-ey’d melancholy.

See, where she comes apparell’d like the spring.

Few love to hear the sins they love to act.

He shall have a noble memory.

Thou hast done a deed whereat valor will weep.

They’ll give him death by inches.

If you have writ your annals true, ’tis there, That, like an eagle in a dovecote, I Flutter’d your Volscians in Corioli: Alone I did it.

O! a kiss Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!

Chaste as the icicle That’s curdied by the frost from purest snow, And hangs on Dian’s temple.

His nature is too noble for the world: He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, Or Jove for ’s power to thunder. His heart’s his mouth: What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent. 52