William Davenant Quotations

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

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

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

For I must go where lazy PeaceWill hide her drowsy head;And, for the sport of kings, increaseThe number of the dead.

For I must go where lazy Peace Will hide her drowsy head; And, for the sport of kings, increase The number of the dead.

Generous souls Are still most subject to credulity.

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

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

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.

Faith lights us through the dark to Deity.

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

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.

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.

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

Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run.

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.

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.

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

To a Mistress Dying Lover. YOUR beauty, ripe and calm and fresh As eastern summers are, Must now, forsaking time and flesh, Add light to some small star. Philosopher. Whilst she yet lives, were stars decay'd, Their light by hers relief might find; But Death will lead her to a shade Where Love is cold and Beauty blind. Lover. Lovers, whose priests all poets are, Think every mistress, when she dies, Is changed at least into a star: And who dares doubt the poet wise? Philosopher. But ask not bodies doom'd to die To what abode they go; Since Knowledge is but Sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.

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.

Aubade THE lark now leaves his wat'ry nest, And climbing shakes his dewy wings. He takes this window for the East, And to implore your light he sings- Awake, awake! the morn will never rise Till she can dress her beauty at your eyes. The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, The ploughman from the sun his season takes, But still the lover wonders what they are Who look for day before his mistress wakes. Awake, awake! break thro' your veils of lawn! Then draw your curtains, and begin the dawn!

The assembled souls of all that men held wise.

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.

All jealousy must be strangled in its birth...

What one cannot, another can.

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

Honor is the moral conscience of the great.

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

Ambition is the mind's immodesty.

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.