Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof, 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures.
There is nothing strictly immortal, but immortality. Whatever hath no beginning may be confident of no end.
Let the fruition of things bless the possession of them, and take no satisfaction in dying but living rich.
I have tried if I could reach that great resolution . . . to be honest without a thought of Heaven or Hell.
If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace with them; and think it not enough to be liberal, but munificent.
There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun.
Half our days we pass in the shadow of the earth; and the brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives.
We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life.
To make an end of all things on Earth, and our Planetical System of the World, he (God) need but put out the Sun.
Though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.
What then is the wisdom of the times called old? Is it the wisdom of gray hairs? No. It is the wisdom of the cradle.
Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-lined circle must conclude and shut up all.
Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition, and human lapses, may make not only moles but warts in learned authors.
Sleep is a death, O make me try By sleeping, what it is to die, And as gently lay my head On my grave, as now my bed.
Were the happiness of the next world is as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.
Be thou what thou singly art and personate only thyself. Swim smoothly in the stream of thy nature and live but one man.
There is musick, even in the beauty and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument.
As sins proceed they ever multiply, and like figures in arithmetic, the last stands for more than all that wert before it.
With what shift and pains we come into the World we remember not; but 'tis commonly found no easy matter to get out of it.
Nor do they speak properly who say that time consumeth all things; for time is not effective, nor are bodies destroyed by it.
They do most by Books, who could do much without them, and he that chiefly owes himself unto himself, is the substantial Man.
For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order, or proportion, and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.
I believe the world grows near its end, yet is neither old nor decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruins of its own principles.
I intend no Monopoly, but a Community in Learning; I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves.
We term sleep a death by which we may be literally said to die daily; in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers.
A diamond, which is the hardest of stones, not yielding unto steel, emery or any other thing, is yet made soft by the blood of a goat.
Praise is a debt we owe unto the virtue of others, and due unto our own from all whom malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb.
I would not live over my hours past ... not unto Cicero's ground because I have lived them well, but for fear I should live them worse.
But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity.
Had not almost every man suffered by the Press, or were not the tyranny thereof become universal, I had not wanted reason for complaint.
There are wonders in true affection. It is a body of enigmas, mysteries, and riddles, wherein two so become one, as they both become two.
They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another.
The mortalist enemy unto knowledge, and that which hath done the greatest execution unto truth, has been a preemptory adhesion unto authority.
Think not silence the wisdom of fools; but, if rightly timed, the honor of wise men, who have not the infirmity, but the virtue of taciturnity.
There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read may read our natures.
What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.
A man is never alone, not only because he is with himself and his own thoughts, but because he is with the Devil, who ever consorts with our solitude.
There is no such thing as solitude, nor anything that can be said to be alone and by itself but God, who is His own circle, and can subsist by Himself.
There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read A, B, C may read our natures.
Oblivion is not to be hired: The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the Register of God, not in the record of man.
Who knows whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time?
That miracles have been, I do believe; that they may yet be wrought by the living, I do not deny: but have no confidence in those which are fathered on the dead.
Yes, even amongst wiser militants, how many wounds have been given, and credits slain, for the poor victory of an opinion, or beggarly conquest of a distinction.
All things began in Order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again, according to the Ordainer of Order, and the mystical mathematicks of the City of Heaven.
There is something in us that can be without us, and will be after us, though indeed it hath no history of what it was before us, and cannot tell how it entered into us.
We censure others but as they disagree from that humor which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us.
It is we that are blind, not fortune; because our eye is too dim to discern the mystery of her effects, we foolishly paint her blind, and hoodwink the providence of the Almighty.
I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms.
Not to be content with Life is the unsatisfactory state of those which destroy themselves; who being afraid to live, run blindly upon their own Death, which no Man fears by Experience.
Times before you, when even the living men were Antiquities; when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world, could not be properly said, to go unto the greater number.