537 quotes
Trust on and think To-morrow will repay;
To-morrow's falser than the former day;
Lies worse; and while it says, we shall be blest
With some new Joys, cuts off what we possest.
Love never fails to master what he finds,
But works a different way in different minds,
The fool enlightens, and the wise he blinds.
This youth, proposing to possess and 'scape,
Began in murder, to conclude in rape.
If confidence presage a victory, Eugenius, in his own opinion, has already triumphed over the Ancients: nothing seems more easy to him than to overcome those whom it is our greatest praise to have imitated well; for we do not only build upon their foundation, but by their models.
Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668)
Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
A woman's counsel brought us first to woe,
And made her man his paradise forego,
Where at heart's ease he liv'd; and might have been
As free from sorrow as he was from sin.
So liv'd our sires, ere doctors learn'd to kill,
And multiplied with theirs the weekly bill.
What flocks of critics hover here to-day,
As vultures wait on armies for their prey,
All gaping for the carcase of a play!
With croaking notes they bode some dire event,
And follow dying poets by the scent.
All for Love (1678)
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
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)
Indulge, and to thy genius freely give;
For not to live at ease, is not to live.
Death stalks behind thee, and each flying hour
Does some loose remnant of thy life devour.
Live, while thou liv'st; for death will make us all
A name, a nothing but an old wife's tale.
The Satires of Juvenal and Persius (1693)
We spirits have just such natures
We had for all the world, when human creatures;
And, therefore, I, that was an actress here,
Play all my tricks in hell, a goblin there.
Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not heaven itself upon the past has power;
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
Imitation of Horace (1685)
Doeg, though without knowing how or why,
Made still a blundering kind of melody;
Spurr'd boldly on, and dash'd through thick and thin,
Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in;
Free from all meaning whether good or bad,
And in one word, heroically mad.
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
Of no distemper, of no blast he died,
But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long —
Even wondered at, because he dropped no sooner.
Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years,
Yet freshly ran he on ten winters more;
Till like a clock worn out with eating time,
The wheels of weary life at last stood still.
Œdipus (1679)
Here lies my wife: here let her lie!
Now she's at rest, and so am I.
Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next, in majesty; in both the last.
The force of Nature could no further go.
To make a third, she joined the former two.
Under Mr. Milton's Picture (1688)
All who (like him) have writ ill plays before,
For they, like thieves, condemned, are hangmen made,
To execute the members of their trade.
Self-defence is nature's eldest law
Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
The rest to some faint meaning make pretense,
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.
Mac Flecknoe (1682)
At every close she made, th' attending throng
Replied, and bore the burden of the song:
So just, so small, yet in so sweet a note,
It seemed the music melted in the throat.
So, when the last and dreadful Hour
This crumbling Pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And musick shall untune the Sky.
A Song for St. Cecilia's Day (1687)