William Davenant Quotes

• All slander must still be strangled in its birth, or time will soon conspire to make it strong enough to overcome the truth.

  William Davenant

  Strong, Overcoming, Birth

  10 Copy quote

• What one cannot, another can.

  William Davenant

  Ability

  4 Copy quote

• Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow
  Of slight beginnings to important ends.

  William Davenant

  Fate, Important, Doe

  4 Copy quote

• Actions rare and sudden do commonly proceed from fierce necessity, of else from some oblique design, which is ashamed to show itself in the public road.

  William Davenant

  Design, Action, Fierce

  7 Copy quote

• Faith lights us through the dark to Deity.

  William Davenant

  Faith, Dark, Light

  4 Copy quote

• Had laws not been, we never had been blam'd; For not to know we sinn'd is innocence.

  William Davenant

  Law, Innocence, Knows

  7 Copy quote

• Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.

  William Davenant

  Sorrow, Spy, Safe

  Sir William Davenant (1872). “Dramatic Works of William D'Avenant”, p.265

  7 Copy quote

• Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.

  William Davenant

  Glasses, Perfect, Calamity

  8 Copy quote

• Anger is blood, poured and perplexed into froth; but malice is the wisdom of our wrath.

  William Davenant

  Anger, Wrath, Blood

  30 Copy quote

• For in a dearth of comforts, we art taught
  To be contented with the least.

  William Davenant

  Art, Comfort, Taught

  4 Copy quote

• Ambition's monstrous stomach does increase
  By eating, and it fears to starve, unless
  It still may feed, and all it sees devour;
  Ambition is not tir'd with toll nor cloy'd with power.

  William Davenant

  Ambition, Doe, Tolls

  4 Copy quote

• How beautiful is sorrow when it is dressed by virgin innocence! it makes felicity in others seem deformed.

  William Davenant

  Beautiful, Grief, Sorrow

  5 Copy quote

• All jealousy must be strangled in its birth.

  William Davenant

  Gratitude, Birth

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  William Davenant

  Feet, Liberty, Heroic

  4 Copy quote

• Ambition is the mind's immodesty.

  William Davenant

  Ambition, Mind

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  William Davenant

  Wise, Prayer, Ocean

  William Davenant, “Praise And Prayer”

  4 Copy quote

• Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run.

  William Davenant

  Running, Speed, Seems

  4 Copy quote

• Fame, like the river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off.

  William Davenant

  Rivers, Afar, Fame

  7 Copy quote

• It is the wit and policy of sin to hate those we have abused.

  William Davenant

  Hate, Abuse, Sin

  9 Copy quote

• Generous souls
  Are still most subject to credulity.

  William Davenant

  Soul, Stills, Subjects

  Sir William Davenant (1872). “Dramatic Works of William D'Avenant”, p.28

  4 Copy quote

• O harmless Death! whom still the valiant brave,
  The wise expect, the sorrowful invite,
  And all the good embrace, who know the grave
  A short dark passage to eternal light.

  William Davenant

  Death, Wise, Dark

  William Davenant, “Frail Life! In Which, Through Mists Of Human Breath”

  4 Copy quote

• Think not ambition wise, because 't is brave.

  William Davenant

  Wise, Ambition, Thinking

  6 Copy quote

• Honor is the moral conscience of the great.

  William Davenant

  Army, Honor, Moral

  7 Copy quote

• Be not with honor's gilded baits beguil'd,
  Nor think ambition wise, because 'tis brave;
  For though we like it, as a forward child,
  'Tis so unsound, her cradle is the grave.

  William Davenant

  Wise, Children, Ambition

  4 Copy quote

• Go! dive into the Southern Sea, and when
  Th'ast found, to trouble the nice sight of men,
  A swelling pearl, and such whose single worth
  Boasts all the wonders which the seas bring forth,
  Give it Endymion's love, whose ev'ry tear
  Would more enrich the skilful jeweller.

  William Davenant

  Nice, Men, Sight

  4 Copy quote

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