Quotes to inspire and reflect

Thou wear a lion’s hide! doff it for shame, And hang a calf’s-skin on those recreant limbs.

I will instruct my sorrows to be proud; For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.

That smooth-fac’d gentleman, tickling Commodity, Commodity, the bias of the world.

’Zounds! I was never so bethump’d with words Since I first call’d my brother’s father dad.

Mad world! mad kings, mad composition!

Saint George, that swing’d the dragon, and e’er since Sits on his horse back at mine hostess’ door.

He is the half part of a blessed man, Left to be finished by such a she; And she a fair divided excellence, Whose fullness of perfection lies in him.

Whose valor plucks dead lions by the beard. 8

For courage mounteth with occasion.

Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age’s tooth.

Bearing their birthrights proudly on their backs, To make a hazard of new fortunes here.

When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson’s saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian’s nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl.

For new-made honor doth forget men’s names.

When daisies pied and violets blue, And lady-smocks all silver-white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men; for thus sings he, Cuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo: O word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear!

When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-who; Tu-whit, tu-who—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it.

Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, Three-pil’d hyperboles, spruce affectation, Figures pedantical.

From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain, and nourish all the world.

As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair; And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.

But love, first learned in a lady’s eyes, Lives not alone immured in the brain.

It adds a precious seeing to the eye.

For where is any author in the world Teaches such beauty as a woman’s eye? Learning is but an adjunct to ourself.

Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.

A very beadle to a humorous sigh.

This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy, This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid; Regent of love-rimes, lord of folded arms, The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans, Liege of all loiters and malcontents.

Your wit’s too hot, it speeds too fast, ’twill tire.

A merrier man, Within the limit of becoming mirth, I never spent an hour’s talk withal.

At Christmas I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May’s newfangled mirth; But like of each thing that in season grows.

Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye, Not utter’d by base sale of chapmen’s tongues.

Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun, That will not be deep-search’d with saucy looks; Small have continual plodders ever won, Save base authority from others’ books. These earthly godfathers of heaven’s lights That give a name to every fixed star, Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those that walk and wot not what they are.

Light seeking light doth light of light beguile.

Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain Which, with pain purchas’d doth inherit pain.

Make us heirs of all eternity.

Spite of cormorant devouring Time.

How use doth breed a habit in a man!

Black men are pearls in beauteous ladies’ eyes.

Alas, how love can trifle with itself!

Who is Silvia? what is she, That all our swains commend her? Holy, fair, and wise is she; The heaven such grace did lend her, That she might admired be.

Except I be by Silvia in the night, There is no music in the nightingale.

That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man, If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.

He makes sweet music with th’ enamell’d stones.

O! how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day!

O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible, As a nose on a man’s face, or a weathercock on a steeple!

Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.

Julia: They do not love that do not show their love. Lucetta: O! they love least that let men know their love.

Such duty as the subject owes the prince, Even such a woman oweth to her husband.

A woman mov’d is like a fountain troubled, Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.