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They make their fortune who are stout and wise,
Wit rules the heavens, discretion guides the skies.

— Edward Fairfax Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

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Source: Book X, stanza 20
Work: Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, 1600
Source quality: Source identified Names the work or year, but without an exact location.

More by Edward Fairfax

The fear of ill exceeds the evil we fear.

Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

Women have tongues of craft, and hearts of guile,
They will, they will not, fools that on them trust,
For in their speech is death, hell in their smile.

Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

Nor love consents that beauty's field lie waste.

Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

Hard is that heart which beauty makes not soft.

Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

Better sit still, men say, than rise to fall.

Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

Vile man, begot of clay, and born of dust.

Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

Power constrained is but a glorious slave.

Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

Oh vanity of man's unstable mind,
Puffed up with every blast of friendly wind!

Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

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Luck

More quotes by Edward Fairfax

Patience, a praise; forbearance is a treasure;
Sufferance, an angel is; a monster, rage.

Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

Remembrance is the life of grief; his grave,
Forgetfulness.

Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

Nature gives beauty, fortune wealth, in vain.

Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

Base affections fall, when virtue riseth.

Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

The throne of Cupid had an easy stair;
His bark is fit to sail with every wind;
The breach he makes no wisdom can repair.

Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1600)

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In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.

Louis Pasteur

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night (1601)

O Fortune, cruellest of heavenly powers,
Why make such game of this poor life of ours?

Horace Satires (-35)

Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1776)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Edward Fairfax (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.