Great Throughts Treasury

"All the soul of man is resolution; which expires never from valiant men, till their last breath; and when with it, like a flame extinguish’d for want of matter; it does not die but rather ceases to live."

"Extremes, though contrary, have the like effect; extreme heat mortifies, like extreme cold; extreme love breeds satiety, as well as extreme hatred."

"Love is a razor, cleansing being well us'd, but fetcheth blood still being the least abus'd."

"Virtue is not malicious; wrong done her is righted even when men grant they err."

"Promise is most given when the least is said."

"Love is Nature's second sun."

"They're only truly great who are truly good. "

"Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it the most always like it the least. "

"He that shuns trifles must shun the world. "

"'Tis immortality to die aspiring."

"We inherit nothing truly, but what our actions make us worthy of."

"Fair words never hurt the tongue."

"An Englishman, being flattered, is a lamb; threatened, a lion."

"An ill weed grows apace."

"And for the authentical truth of either person or actions, who (worth the respecting) will expect it in a poem, whose subject is not truth, but things like truth? Poor envious souls they are that cavil at truth's want in these natural fictions; material instruction, elegant and sententious excitation to virtue, and deflection from her contrary, being the soul, limbs, and limits of an authentical tragedy."

"And let a scholar all earth's volumes carry, he will be but a walking dictionary: a mere articulate clock."

"As soon as you're here in front of those race cars, ... everything else kind of goes away."

"Be free all worthy spirits, and stretch yourselves, for greatness and for height."

"Black is a pearl in a woman's eye."

"Blood, though it sleep a time, yet never dies."

"Cornelia. What flowers are these? Gazetta. The pansy this. Cor. Oh, that 's for lovers' thoughts."

"Danger (the spur of all great minds) is ever the curb to your tame spirits."

"Danger, the spur of all great minds."

"Enough 's as good as a feast."

"Exceeding fair she was not; and yet fair in that she never studied to be fairer than Nature made her; beauty cost her nothing, her virtues were so rare."

"As night the life-inclining stars best shows, so lives obscure the starriest souls disclose."

"Flatterers look like friends, as wolves like dogs"

"For one heat, all know, doth drive out another, one passion doth expel another still."

"Fortune, the great commandress of the world, hath divers ways to advance her followers: to some she gives honour without deserving, to other some, deserving without honour."

"Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea loves t' have his sails fill'd with a lusty wind, even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts creak, and his rapt ship run on her side so low that she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air."

"Great Goddesse to whose throne in Cynthian fires, this earthlie Alter endlesse fumes expires,"

"Envy is like a fly that passes all a body's sounder parts, and dwells upon the sores."

"Each natural agent works but to this end,— to render that it works on like itself."

"I am ashamed the law is such an ass."

"I tell thee Love is Nature's second sun, causing a spring of virtues where he shines."

"I will neither yield to the song of the siren nor the voice of the hyena, the tears of the crocodile nor the howling of the wolf."

"Ignorance is the mother of admiration."

"His naked Ulysses clad in eternal fiction."

"His deeds inimitable, like the sea that shuts still as it opes, and leaves no tracts nor prints of precedent for poor men's facts."

"He is at no end of his actions blest whose ends will make him greatest, and not best."

"Make ducks and drakes with shillings."

"Man is a name of honor for a king; additions take away from each chief thing."

"Musicke, and moode, she loues, but loue she hates, (As curious Ladies do, their publique cates) this traine, with meteors, comets, lightenings, the dreadfull presence of our Empresse sings: which grant for euer (ô eternall Night) till vertue flourish in the light of light."

"Let no man value at a little price a virtuous woman's counsel; her wing'd spirit is feather'd oftentimes with heavenly words."

"Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee. Light gains make heavy purses. 'Tis good to be merry and wise."

"Let pride go afore, shame will follow after."

"Man is a torch borne in the wind; a dream but of a shadow, summ'd with all his substance."

"O, innocence, the sacred amulet against all the poisons of infirmity, and all misfortunes, injury, and death."

"News are as welcome as the morning air."

"None ever loved but at first sight they loved."