John Quotes

Railing and praising were his usual themes; and both showed his judgment in extremes. Either over violent or over civil, so everyone to him was either god or devil.

They that possess the prince possess the laws.

For age but tastes of pleasures youth devours.

Sculptors are obliged to follow the manners of the painters, and to make many ample folds, which are unsufferable hardness, and more like a rock than a natural garment.

Among our crimes oblivion may be set.

If all the world be worth thy winning. / Think, oh think it worth enjoying: / Lovely Thaïs sits beside thee, / Take the good the gods provide thee.

None are so busy as the fool and the knave.

There is a proud modesty in merit.

He made all countries where he came his own.

I am resolved to grow fat and look young till forty, and then slip out of the world with the first wrinkle and the reputation of five-and-twenty.

I am devilishly afraid, that's certain; but ... I'll sing, that I may seem valiant.

What I have left is from my native spring; I've still a heart that swells, in scorn of fate, And lifts me to my banks.

Desire of power, on earth a vicious weed, Yet, sprung from high, is of celestial seed: In God 'tisglory; and when men aspire, 'Tis but a spark too much of heavenly fire.

How happy the lover, How easy his chain, How pleasing his pain, How sweet to discover He sighs not in vain.

To die for faction is a common evil, But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil.

We by art unteach what Nature taught.

A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth.

What, start at this! when sixty years have spread. Their grey experience o'er thy hoary head? Is this the all observing age could gain? Or hast thou known the world so long in vain?

I never saw any good that came of telling truth.

Freedom which in no other land will thrive, Freedom an English subject's sole prerogative.

If passion rules, how weak does reason prove!

No king nor nation one moment can retard the appointed hour.

So softly death succeeded life in her, She did but dream of heaven, and she was there.

Time and death shall depart and say in flying Love has found out a way to live, by dying.

The love of liberty with life is given, And life itself the inferior gift of Heaven.

Present joys are more to flesh and blood Than a dull prospect of a distant good.

Go miser go, for money sell your soul. Trade wares for wares and trudge from pole to pole, So others may say when you are dead and gone. See what a vast estate he left his son.

All heiresses are beautiful.

Content with poverty, my soul I arm; And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.

Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.

All delays are dangerous in war.

The bravest men are subject most to chance.

Men's virtues I have commended as freely as I have taxed their crimes.

These are the effects of doting age,--vain doubts and idle cares and over caution.

Shakespeare was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of the books to read nature; he looked inward, and found her there.

not judging truth to be in nature better than falsehood, but setting a value upon both according to interest.

All the learn'd are cowards by profession.

Fortune's unjust; she ruins oft the brave, and him who should be victor, makes the slave.

New vows to plight, and plighted vows to break.

If we from wealth to poverty descend, Want gives to know the flatterer from the friend.

Death only this mysterious truth unfolds, The mighty soul how small a body holds.

How easy 'tis, when Destiny proves kind, With full-spread sails to run before the wind!

An ugly woman in a rich habit set out with jewels nothing can become.

Ever a glutton, at another's cost, But in whose kitchen dwells perpetual frost.

Interest makes all seem reason that leads to it.

The World to Bacon does not only owe it's present knowledge, but its future too.

I learn to pity woes so like my own.

Thou tyrant, tyrant Jealousy, Thou tyrant of the mind!

Jealousy's a proof of love, But 'tis a weak and unavailing medicine; It puts out the disease and makes it show, But has no power to cure.

Second thoughts, they say, are best.