John Webster Quotes

d. 1630 England

John Webster (c. 1580 – c. 1634) was an English Jacobean dramatist, a late contemporary of William Shakespeare. His tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage.

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Also known as: Webster, John

Random John Webster quote

35 quotes

Past sorrows, let us moderately lament them;
For those to come, seek wisely to prevent them.

We are merely the stars' tennis balls, struck and bandied
Which way please them.

Were there no heaven nor hell
I should be honest.

The Duchess of Malfi (1623)

All his reverend wit
Lies in his wardrobe.

The White Devil (1612)

Vain the ambition of kings
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.

The Devil's Law Case (1623)

I saw him even now going the way of all flesh.

Condemn you me for that the duke did love me?
So may you blame some fair and crystal river
For that some melancholic, distracted man
Hath drown'd himself in 't.

The White Devil (1612)

I do love these ancient ruins.
We never tread upon them but we set
Our foot upon some reverend history.

Thought, as a subtle juggler, makes us deem
Things supernatural, which have cause
Common as sickness.

Do you not weep?
Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out.
The element of water moistens the earth,
But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens.

I saw him now going the way of all flesh.

Sorrow is held the eldest child of sin.

Silver is the king's stamp; man God's stamp, and a woman is man's stamp; we are not current till we pass from one man to another.

I saw him going the way of all flesh.

I have ever thought,
Nature doth nothing so great for great men,
As when she's pleas'd to make them lords of truth.
Integrity of life is fame's best friend,
Which nobly, beyond death, shall crown the end.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John Webster (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.