The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

Fallen from his high estate, And welt’ring in his blood: Deserted at his utmost need By those his former bounty fed;

On the bare earth exposed he lies, With not a friend to close his eyes.

‘Alexander’s Feast’ (1697) l. 78

Revolving in his altered soul

The various turns of chance below.

‘Alexander’s Feast’ (1697) l. 85

War, he sung, is toil and trouble; Honour but an empty bubble. Never ending, still beginning, Fighting still, and still destroying, If the world be worth thy winning, Think, oh think, it worth enjoying.

‘Alexander’s Feast’ (1697) l. 97

Sighed and looked, and sighed again.

‘Alexander’s Feast’ (1697) l. 120

Let old Timotheus yield the prize, Or both divide the crown:

He raised a mortal to the skies; She drew an angel down.

‘Alexander’s Feast’ (1697) l. 177 (on ‘Divine Cecilia’)

Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;

He who would search for pearls must dive below.

‘All for Love’ (1678) prologue

My love’s a noble madness.

‘All for Love’ (1678) act 2, sc. 1

Give, you gods,

Give to your boy, your Caesar, The rattle of a globe to play withal,

This gewgaw world, and put him cheaply off: I’ll not be pleased with less than Cleopatra.

‘All for Love’ (1678) act 2, sc. 1

Men are but children of a larger growth; Our appetites as apt to change as theirs, And full as craving too, and full as vain.

‘All for Love’ (1678) act 4, sc. 1.

Welcome, thou kind deceiver!

Thou best of thieves; who, with an easy key, Dost open life, and, unperceived by us, Even steal us from ourselves.

‘All for Love’ (1678) act 5, sc. 1 (of Love)

By viewing nature, nature’s handmaid art,

Makes mighty things from small beginnings grow: Thus fishes first to shipping did impart,

Their tail the rudder, and their head the prow.

‘Annus Mirabilis’ (1667) st. 155

An horrid stillness first invades the ear, And in that silence we the tempest fear.

‘Astraea Redux’ (1660) l. 7

Death, in itself, is nothing; but we fear,

To be we know not what, we know not where.

‘Aureng-Zebe’ (1675) act 4, sc. 1

None would live past years again,

Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And, from the dregs of life, think to receive, What the first sprightly running could not give.

‘Aureng-Zebe’ (1675) act 4, sc. 1

Refined himself to soul, to curb the sense And made almost a sin of abstinence.

‘The Character of a Good Parson’ (1700) l. 10

I am as free as nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began,

When wild in woods the noble savage ran.

‘The Conquest of Granada’ (1670) pt. 1, act 1, sc. 1

Forgiveness to the injured does belong;

But they ne’er pardon, who have done the wrong.

‘The Conquest of Granada’ (1670) pt. 2, act 1, sc. 2

Thou strong seducer, opportunity!

‘The Conquest of Granada’ (1670) pt. 2, act 4, sc. 3

Bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense, But good men starve for want of impudence.

‘Constantine the Great’ (1684) epilogue

He trudged along unknowing what he sought, And whistled as he went, for want of thought.

‘Cymon and Iphigenia’ (1700) l. 84

She hugged the offender, and forgave the offence.

‘Cymon and Iphigenia’ (1700) l. 367.

Of seeming arms to make a short essay,

Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day.

‘Cymon and Iphigenia’ (1700) l. 407

His colours laid so thick on every place, As only showed the paint, but hid the face.

Epistle ‘To my honoured friend Sir Robert Howard’ l. 75

Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought, Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. The wise, for cure, on exercise depend; God never made his work, for man to mend.

Epistle ‘To my honoured kinsman John Driden’ l. 92

Even victors are by victories undone.

Epistle ‘To my honoured kinsman John Driden’ l. 164

For he was great, ere fortune made him so.

‘Heroic Stanzas’ (1659, on the death of Oliver Cromwell) st. 6

And doomed to death, though fated not to die.

‘The Hind and the Panther’ (1687) pt. 1, l. 8

For truth has such a face and such a mien As to be loved needs only to be seen.

‘The Hind and the Panther’ (1687) pt. 1, l. 33

My manhood, long misled by wandering fires, Followed false lights; and when their glimpse was gone My pride struck out new sparkles of her own...

Good life be now my task: my doubts are done; (What more could fright my faith than Three in One?)

‘The Hind and the Panther’ (1687) pt. 1, l. 72

Reason to rule, but mercy to forgive: The first is law, the last prerogative.

‘The Hind and the Panther’ (1687) pt. 1, l. 261

Either be wholly slaves or wholly free.

‘The Hind and the Panther’ (1687) pt. 2, l. 285

Much malice mingled with a little wit Perhaps may censure this mysterious writ.

‘The Hind and the Panther’ (1687) pt. 3, l. 1

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

‘The Hind and the Panther’ (1687) pt. 3, l. 364

By education most have been misled;

So they believe, because they so were bred. The priest continues what the nurse began,

And thus the child imposes on the man.

‘The Hind and the Panther’ (1687) pt. 3, l. 389

T’abhor the makers, and their laws approve, Is to hate traitors and the treason love.

‘The Hind and the Panther’ (1687) pt. 3, l. 706.

For those whom God to ruin has designed, He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind.

‘The Hind and the Panther’ (1687) pt. 3, l. 1093.

And love’s the noblest frailty of the mind.

‘The Indian Emperor’ (1665) act 2, sc. 2.

Repentance is the virtue of weak minds.

‘The Indian Emperor’ (1665) act 3, sc. 1

For all the happiness mankind can gain Is not in pleasure, but in rest from pain.

‘The Indian Emperor’ (1665) act 4, sc. 1

That fairy kind of writing which depends only upon the force of imagination.

‘King Arthur’ (1691) dedication

War is the trade of kings.

‘King Arthur’ (1691) act 2, sc. 2

Fairest Isle, all isles excelling, Seat of pleasures, and of loves;

Venus here will choose her dwelling, And forsake her Cyprian groves.

‘King Arthur’ (1691) act 5 ‘Song of Venus’

Ovid, the soft philosopher of love.

‘Love Triumphant’ (1694) act 2, sc. 1

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

‘Love Triumphant’ (1694) act 3, sc. 1 ‘Song of Jealousy’

All human things are subject to decay,

And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey.

‘MacFlecknoe’ (1682) l. 1

The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense.

Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell’s genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day.

‘MacFlecknoe’ (1682) l. 19

Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame

In keen iambics, but mild anagram:

Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command Some peaceful province in Acrostic Land.

There thou mayest wings display and altars raise, And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.

‘MacFlecknoe’ (1682) l. 203

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.

‘The Maiden Queen’ (1668) act 3, sc. 1

I am to be married within these three days; married past redemption.

‘Marriage á la Mode’ (1672) act 1, sc. 1

We loathe our manna, and we long for quails.

‘The Medal’ (1682) l. 131

But treason is not owned when ’tis descried; Successful crimes alone are justified.

‘The Medal’ (1682) l. 207

Whatever is, is in its causes just.

‘Oedipus’ (written jointly with Nathaniel Lee, q.v., 1679) act 3, sc. 1

But love’s a malady without a cure.

‘Palamon and Arcite’ (1700) bk. 2, l. 110

Fool, not to know that love endures no tie, And Jove but laughs at lovers’ perjury.

‘Palamon and Arcite’ (1700) bk. 2, l. 148.

And Antony, who lost the world for love.

‘Palamon and Arcite’ (1700) bk. 2, l. 607

Repentance is but want of power to sin.

‘Palamon and Arcite’ (1700) bk. 3, l. 813

Since every man who lives is born to die, And none can boast sincere felicity,

With equal mind, what happens, let us bear,

Nor joy nor grieve too much for things beyond our care. Like pilgrims to th’ appointed place we tend;

The world’s an inn, and death the journey’s end.

‘Palamon and Arcite’ (1700) bk. 3, l. 883

A virgin-widow, and a mourning bride.

‘Palamon and Arcite’ (1700) bk. 3, l. 927

But ’tis the talent of our English nation, Still to be plotting some new reformation.

‘The Prologue at Oxford, 1680’; prologue to Nathaniel Lee ‘Sophonisba’ (2nd ed., 1681)

So poetry, which is in Oxford made

An art, in London only is a trade.

‘Prologue to the University of Oxon...at the Acting of The Silent Woman’ (1673)

And this unpolished rugged verse I chose As fittest for discourse and nearest prose.

‘Religio Laici’ (1682) l. 453

I strongly wish for what I faintly hope: Like the day-dreams of melancholy men, I think and think on things impossible, Yet love to wander in that golden maze.

‘The Rival Ladies’ (1664) act 3, sc. 1

A very merry, dancing, drinking, Laughing, quaffing, and unthinking time.

‘The Secular Masque’ (1700) l. 39

Joy ruled the day, and Love the night.

‘The Secular Masque’ (1700) l. 81

All, all of a piece throughout; Thy chase had a beast in view; Thy wars brought nothing about; Thy lovers were all untrue.

’Tis well an old age is out, And time to begin a new.

‘The Secular Masque’ (1700) l. 92

For secrets are edged tools,

And must be kept from children and from fools.

‘Sir Martin Mar-All’ (1667) act 2, sc. 2

From harmony, from heavenly harmony This universal frame began:

From harmony to harmony

Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason closing full in Man.

‘A Song for St Cecilia’s Day’ (1687) st. 1

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?

‘A Song for St Cecilia’s Day’ (1687) st. 2

The soft complaining flute.

‘A Song for St Cecilia’s Day’ (1687) st. 4

The trumpet shall be heard on high, The dead shall live, the living die, And Music shall untune the sky.

‘A Song for St Cecilia’s Day’ (1687) ‘Grand Chorus’

There is a pleasure sure,

In being mad, which none but madmen know!

‘The Spanish Friar’ (1681) act 1, sc. 1

And, dying, bless the hand that gave the blow.

‘The Spanish Friar’ (1681) act 2, sc. 2

Mute and magnificent, without a tear.

‘Threnodia Augustalis’ (1685) st. 2

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

‘Threnodia Augustalis’ (1685) st. 10

Wit will shine

Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line.

‘To the Memory of Mr Oldham’ (1684)

Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies, Made in the last promotion of the blest.

‘To the pious Memory of...Mrs Anne Killigrew’ (1686) l. 1

And he, who servilely creeps after sense, Is safe, but ne’er will reach an excellence.

‘Tyrannic Love’ (1669) prologue

All delays are dangerous in war.

‘Tyrannic Love’ (1669) act 1, sc. 1

Pains of love be sweeter far Than all other pleasures are.

‘Tyrannic Love’ (1669) act 4, sc. 1

Happy the man, and happy he alone, He, who can call to-day his own: He who, secure within, can say,

To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day.

Translation of Horace ‘Odes’ bk. 3, no. 29.

Not Heaven itself upon the past has power;

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

Translation of Horace ‘Odes’ bk. 3, no. 29

I can enjoy her while she’s kind; But when she dances in the wind,

And shakes the wings, and will not stay, I puff the prostitute away.

Translation of Horace ‘Odes’ bk. 3, no. 29 (prostitute Fortune)

Look round the habitable world! how few Know their own good; or knowing it, pursue.

Translation of Juvenal ‘Satires’ no. 10

To see and be seen, in heaps they run;

Some to undo, and some to be undone.

Translation of Ovid ‘The Art of Love’ bk. 1, l. 109

She knows her man, and when you rant and swear, Can draw you to her with a single hair.

Translation of Persius ‘Satires’ no. 5, l. 246

Arms, and the man I sing, who, forced by fate, And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate, Expelled and exiled, left the Trojan shore.

Translation of Virgil ‘Aeneid’ (‘Aeneis’, 1697) bk. 1, l. 1.

We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.

‘Aeneis’ (1697) dedication

Every age has a kind of universal genius, which inclines those that live in it to some particular studies.

‘An Essay of Dramatic Poesy’ (1668)

A thing well said will be wit in all languages.

‘An Essay of Dramatic Poesy’ (1668)

He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul...He was naturally learn’d; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature: he looked inwards, and found her there...He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great.

‘An Essay of Dramatic Poesy’ (1668) on Shakespeare

He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him.

‘An Essay of Dramatic Poesy’ (1668) on Ben Jonson

If by the people you understand the multitude, the hoi polloi, ’tis no matter what they think; they are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong: their judgement is a mere lottery.

‘An Essay of Dramatic Poesy’ (1668)

[Shakespeare] is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost everywhere two faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one, ere you despise the other.

‘Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age’ (1672)

What judgement I had increases rather than diminishes; and thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or reject; to run them into verse or to give them the other harmony of prose.

‘Fables Ancient and Modern’ (1700) preface

’Tis sufficient to say [of Chaucer], according to the proverb, that here is God’s plenty.

‘Fables Ancient and Modern’ (1700) preface

[Chaucer] is a perpetual fountain of good sense.

‘Fables Ancient and Modern’ (1700) preface

One of our late great poets is sunk in his reputation, because he could never forgive any conceit which came in his way; but swept like a drag-net, great and small. There was plenty enough, but

the dishes were ill-sorted; whole pyramids of sweetmeats, for boys and women; but little of solid meat for men.

‘Fables Ancient and Modern’ (1700) preface (on Abraham Cowley)

How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! To spare the grossness of the names, and to do the thing yet more severely, is to draw a full face, and to make the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of shadowing.

‘Of Satire’ (1693)

Sure the poet...spewed up a good lump of clotted nonsense at once.

‘On Settle’

A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch’s wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly was only belonging to her husband.

‘On Settle’

4.94 Alexander Dubcek 1921—

Ve sluzb ch lidu dclali takovou politiku, aby socialismus neztr cel svou lidskou tv r.

In the service of the people we followed a policy so that socialism would not lose its human

face.

In ‘Rudé Právo’ 19 July 1968. A resolution by the party group in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in 1968, referred to Czechoslovakian foreign policy acquiring ‘its own defined face’: Rudé Právo 14 March 1968

4.95 Joachim Du Bellay 1522-60

France, mére des arts, des armes et des lois.

France, mother of arts, of warfare, and of laws.

‘Les regrets’ (1558) sonnet no. 9

Heureux qui comme Ulysse a fait un beau voyage Ou comme cestuy lá qui conquit la toison,

Et puis est retournè, plein d’usage et raison, Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son aage!

Happy he who like Ulysses has made a great journey, or like that man who won the Fleece and

then came home, full of experience and good sense, to live the rest of his time among his family!

‘Les regrets’ (1558) sonnet no. 31

Plus que le marbre dur me plaist l’ardoise fine, Plus mon Loyre Gaulois, que le Tybre Latin, Plus mon petit Lyrè, que le mont Palatin,

Et plus que l’air marin la doulceur angevine.

I love thin slate more than hard marble, my Gallic Loire more than the Latin Tiber, my little Lirè more than the Palatine Hill, and more than the sea air the sweetness of Anjou.

‘Les regrets’ (1558) sonnet no. 31

4.96 W. E. B. Du Bois (William Eward Burghardt Du Bois) 1868-1963

One thing alone I charge you. As you live, believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life. The only possible death is to lose belief in this truth simply because the great end comes slowly, because time is long.

Last message, written 26 June, 1957, and read at his funeral, 1963, in ‘Journal of Negro History’ April 1964

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.

‘The Souls of the Black Folk’ (1903) ch. 2

Herein lies the tragedy of the ape: not that men are poor...not that men are wicked...but that men know so little of men.

‘The Souls of the Black Folk’ (1903)

4.97 Stephen Duck 1705-56

Let those who feast at ease on dainty fare, Pity the reapers, who their feasts prepare.

‘The Thresher’s Labour’ (1730)

Like Sisyphus, our work is never done; Continually rolls back the restless stone.

‘The Thresher’s Labour’ (1730)

4.98 Mme Du Deffand (Marie de Vichy-Chamrond) 1697-1780

La distance n’y fait rien; il n’y a que le premier pas qui coûte.

The distance is nothing; it is only the first step that is difficult.

Commenting on the legend that St Denis, carrying his head in his hands, walked two leagues: letter to Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, 7 July 1763, in Gaston Maugras ‘Trois mois á la cour de Frèdèric’ (1886) p. 28

4.99 George Duffield 1818-88

Stand up!—stand up for Jesus! Ye soldiers of the Cross.

‘Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus’ (1858 hymn) in C. D. Cleveland ‘Lyra Sacra Americana’ (1868), the opening line inspired by the dying words of the American evangelist, Dudley Atkins Tyng, to Duffield: ‘Tell them to stand up for Jesus’

4.100 Georges Duhamel 1884-1966

Je respecte trop l’idèe de Dieu pour la rendre responsable d’un monde aussi absurde.

I have too much respect for the idea of God to make it responsible for such an absurd world.

‘Le dèsert de Biévres’ (1937) in ‘Chronique des Pasquier’ (1948) vol. 5, p. 249

4.101 Raoul Duke

See Hunter S. Thompson (8.36) in Volume II