William Davenant Quotes

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

What one cannot, another can.

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

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.

Faith lights us through the dark to Deity.

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

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

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

Anger is blood, poured and perplexed into froth; but malice is the wisdom of our wrath.

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

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.

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

All jealousy must be strangled in its birth.

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.

Ambition is the mind's immodesty.

Praise and Prayer PRAISE is devotion fit for mighty minds, The diff'ring world's agreeing sacrifice; Where Heaven divided faiths united finds: But Prayer in various discord upward flies. For Prayer the ocean is where diversely Men steer their course, each to a sev'ral coast; Where all our interests so discordant be That half beg winds by which the rest are lost. By Penitence when we ourselves forsake, 'Tis but in wise design on piteous Heaven; In Praise we nobly give what God may take, And are, without a beggar's blush, forgiven.

Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run.

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

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

Generous souls Are still most subject to credulity.

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.

Think not ambition wise, because 't is brave.

Honor is the moral conscience of the great.

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.

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.