Good luck befriend thee, Son; for at thy birth The fairy ladies danced upon the hearth.
It is Chastity, my brother. She that has that is clad in complete steel.
Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.
To know that which lies before us in daily life is the prime wisdom.
How gladly would I meet mortality, my sentence, and be earth in sensible! How glad would lay me down, as in my mother’s lap! There I should rest, and sleep secure.
The sun to me is dark And silent as the moon, When she deserts the night Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
In Physic, things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humors.
A short retirement urges a sweet return.
Here we may reign secure; and in my choice To reign is worth ambition, though in hell: Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
Myself, and all the Angelic Host, that stand in the sight of God enthroned, our happy state hold, as you yours, while our obedience hold. On other surety none: freely we serve, because we freely love.
Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise. That last infirmity of noble mind. To scorn delights, and live laborious days.
Midnight brought on the dusky hour Friendliest to sleep and silence.
Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, sober steadfast, and demure, all in a robe of darkest grain, flowing with majestic train.
Nor jealousy Was understood, the injur’d lover’s hell.
Methought I saw my late espoused saint.
Me miserable! Which way shall I fly Infinite wrath and infinite despair? Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep, Still threat’ning to devour me, opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
O fleeting joys Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes!
I on the other side Us’d no ambition to commend my deeds; The deeds themselves, though mute, spoke loud the doer.
What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste?