Quotes
Quotes about Wit
Come, thou monarch of the vine,
Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne!
To business that we love we rise betime,
And go to 't with delight.
Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish;
A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,
A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon 't.
That which is now a horse, even with a thought
The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct,
As water is in water.
O, wither'd is the garland of the war,
The soldier's pole is fallen.
Mechanic slaves
With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers.
Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes:
With everything that pretty is,
My lady sweet, arise.
Thou art all the comfort
The gods will diet me with.
For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,
And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again.
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste.
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,
But sad mortality o'ersways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies
In the small orb of one particular tear.
Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so proper as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 't were all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd
But to fine issues, nor Nature never lends
The smallest scruple of her excellence
But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Both thanks and use.
No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world.
O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!
A wretched soul, bruised with adversity.
There's a skirmish of wit between them.
Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.
A good old man, sir; he will be talking: as they say, When the age is in the wit is out.
O, what authority and show of truth
Can cunning sin cover itself withal!
I never tempted her with word too large,
But, as a brother to his sister, show'd
Bashful sincerity and comely love.
Patch grief with proverbs.
Charm ache with air, and agony with words.
Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio.
