William Davenant
William Davenant
Sir William Davenant, also spelled D'Avenant, was an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned both the Caroline and Restoration eras and who was active both before and after the English Civil War and during the Interregnum...
ambition mind
Ambition is the mind's immodesty.
fate important doe
Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow Of slight beginnings to important ends.
spring moving sloth
To be rich be diligent; move on Like heav'ns great movers that enrich the earth; Whose moment's sloth would show the world undone; And make the spring straight bury all her birth. Rich are the diligent who can command Time--nature's stock.
strong overcoming birth
All slander must still be strangled in its birth, or time will soon conspire to make it strong enough to overcome the truth.
army honor moral
Honor is the moral conscience of the great.
glasses perfect calamity
Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.
summer wise stars
To a Mistress Dying Lover. YOUR beauty, ripe and calm and fresh As eastern summers are, Must now, forsaking time and flesh, Add light to some small star. Philosopher. Whilst she yet lives, were stars decay'd, Their light by hers relief might find; But Death will lead her to a shade Where Love is cold and Beauty blind. Lover. Lovers, whose priests all poets are, Think every mistress, when she dies, Is changed at least into a star: And who dares doubt the poet wise? Philosopher. But ask not bodies doom'd to die To what abode they go; Since Knowledge is but Sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.
sorrow spy safe
Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.
wise ambition thinking
Think not ambition wise, because 't is brave.
rivers afar fame
Fame, like the river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off.
feet liberty heroic
How much pleasure they lose (and even the pleasures of heroic poesy are not unprofitable) who take away the liberty of a poet, and fetter his feet in the shackles of a historian.
wise men soul
The assembled souls of all that men held wise.
wise prayer ocean
Praise and Prayer PRAISE is devotion fit for mighty minds, The diff'ring world's agreeing sacrifice; Where Heaven divided faiths united finds: But Prayer in various discord upward flies. For Prayer the ocean is where diversely Men steer their course, each to a sev'ral coast; Where all our interests so discordant be That half beg winds by which the rest are lost. By Penitence when we ourselves forsake, 'Tis but in wise design on piteous Heaven; In Praise we nobly give what God may take, And are, without a beggar's blush, forgiven.
gratitude birth
All jealousy must be strangled in its birth...