Quotes
Quotes about Doubt
Time trieth troth in every doubt.
Modest doubt is call'd
The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches
To the bottom of the worst.
But now I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.
I pull in resolution, and begin
To doubt the equivocation of the fiend
That lies like truth: "Fear not, till Birnam wood
Do come to Dunsinane."
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
But, O, what damned minutes tells he o'er
Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!
To be once in doubt
Is once to be resolv'd.
No hinge nor loop
To hang a doubt on.
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.
God never had a church but there, men say,
The Devil a chapel hath raised by some wyles.
I doubted of this saw, till on a day
I westward spied great Edinburgh's Saint Gyles.
Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt;
Nothing's so hard but search will find it out.
Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself.
We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries: "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did;" and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.
Doubtless the pleasure is as great
Of being cheated as to cheat.
Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do ingloriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple: who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?
It is a maxim, that those to whom everybody allows the second place have an undoubted title to the first.
Who shall decide when doctors disagree,
And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?
Stuff the head
With all such reading as was never read:
For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,
And write about it, goddess, and about it.
How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
Who mix'd reason with pleasure, and wisdom with mirth:
If he had any faults, he has left us in doubt.
All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.
Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt,
And every grin so merry draws one out.
Oh, rather give me commentators plain,
Who with no deep researches vex the brain;
Who from the dark and doubtful love to run,
And hold their glimmering tapers to the sun.
And better had they ne'er been born,
Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.
Melt and dispel, ye spectre-doubts, that roll
Cimmerian darkness o'er the parting soul!
