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If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy Love. But fading flowers in every field,
To winter floods their treasures yield;
A honey'd tongue, a heart of gall,
Is Fancy's spring, but Sorrow's fall.

— Walter Raleigh The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd (1599)

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Notes from Wikiquote

Inspired by Christopher Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd to his Love

Topics

Love

More quotes by Walter Raleigh

No man is wise or safe, but he that is honest.

Advice to the Earl of Rutland on his Travels (1596)

A wise man ought not to desire to inhabit that country where men have more authority than laws.

The Cabinet Council (1658)

Silence in love bewrays more woe
Than words, though ne’er so witty:
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity.

Bestow therefore thy youth so, that thou mayest have comfort to remember it when it hath forsaken thee, and not sigh and grieve at the account thereof.

Instructions to his Son and to Posterity (1632)

War begets quiet, quiet idleness, idleness disorder, disorder ruin; likewise ruin order, order virtue, virtue glory and good fortune.

The Cabinet Council (1658)

All Walter Raleigh quotes →

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Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595)

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Bertrand Russell Marriage and Morals (1929)

Not for the body, but for the heart; companion and company are needed.

Sanu Sharma

Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.

Alexander Pope

Attribution

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