William Davenant Quotes

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

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

Think not ambition wise, because 't is brave.

The assembled souls of all that men held wise.

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.

Honor is the moral conscience of the great.

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

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.

What one cannot, another can.

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.

All jealousy must be strangled in its birth.

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

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!

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.

Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run.

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