Walter Raleigh Quotes & Sayings

#1. But true love is a durable fire, In the mind ever burning, Never sick, never old, never dead, From itself never turning.

Walter Raleigh

#2. Desire attained is not desire,
But as the cinders of the fire.

Walter Raleigh

#3. Except thou desire to hasten thine end, take this for a general rule, that thou never add any artificial heat to thy body by wine or spice.

Walter Raleigh

#4. Our shipping and sea service is our best and safest defence as being the only fortification and rampart of England.

Walter Raleigh

#5. It were better for a man to be subject to any vice than to drunkenness; for all other vanities and sins are recovered, but a drunkard will never shake off the delight of beastliness.

Walter Raleigh

#6. Whoso desireth to govern well and securely, it behoveth him to have a vigilant eye to the proceedings of great princes, and to consider seriously of their designs.

Walter Raleigh

#7. No one is wise or safe, but they that are honest.

Walter Raleigh

#8. Whoso taketh in hand to govern a multitude, either by way of liberty or principality, and cannot assure himself of those persons that are enemies to that enterprise, doth frame a state of short perseverance.

Walter Raleigh

#9. Less pains in the world a man cannot take than to bold his tongue.

Walter Raleigh

#10. The necessity of war, which among human actions is the most lawless, hath some kind of affinity with the necessity of law.

Walter Raleigh

#11. Historians desiring to write the actions of men, ought to set down the simple truth, and not say anything for love or hatred; also to choose such an opportunity for writing as it may be lawful to think what they will, and write what they think, which is a rare happiness of the time.

Walter Raleigh

#12. All histories do show, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.

Walter Raleigh

#13. When the grand twelve million jury of our sins and sinful fury, 'Gainst our souls black verdicts give, Christ pleads his death, and then we live. Be thou my speaker, taintless pleader, unblotted lawyer, true proceeder.

Walter Raleigh

#14. If thy friends be of better quality than thyself, thou mayest be sure of two things; first, they will be more careful to keep thy counsel, because they have more to lose than thou hast; the second, they will esteem thee for thyself, and not for that which thou dost possess.

Walter Raleigh

#15. Oh, doughty sons of Hungary! May all success Attend and bless Your warlike ironmongery!

Walter Raleigh

#16. Youth is the opportunity to do something and to be somebody.

Walter Raleigh

#17. Romance is a love affair in other than domestic surroundings.

Walter Raleigh

#18. It is, it is a glorious thing To be a Pirate King.

Walter Raleigh

#19. Better it were not to live than to live a coward.

Walter Raleigh

#20. I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare, but I can write a book by me.

Walter Raleigh

#21. Trust few men; above all, keep your follies to yourself.

Walter Raleigh

#22. I am the monarch of the sea, The Ruler of the Queen's Navee, Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants And we are his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!

Walter Raleigh

#23. Better were it to be unborn than to be ill bred.

Walter Raleigh

#24. Whoever commands the sea, commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.

Walter Raleigh

#25. If thou marry beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which, perchance, will neither last nor please thee one year.

Walter Raleigh

#26. PASSIONS are likened best to floods and streams:
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb;

Walter Raleigh

#27. Above all things, be not made an ass to carry the burdens of other men if any friend desire thee to be his surety, give him a part of what thou has to spare if he presses thee further, he is not thy friend at all.

Walter Raleigh

#28. Death, which hateth and destroyeth a man, is believed; God, which hath made him and loves him, is always deferred.

Walter Raleigh

#29. Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.

Walter Raleigh

#30. But the longest day hath its evening.

Walter Raleigh

#31. The world is but a large prison, out of which some are daily selected for execution.

Walter Raleigh

#32. Our souls, piercing through the impurity of flesh, behold the highest heaven, and thence bring knowledge to contemplate the ever-during, glory and termless joy.

Walter Raleigh

#33. The difference between a rich man and a poor man is this
the former eats when he pleases, and the latter when he can get it.

Walter Raleigh

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

Walter Raleigh

#35. Our immortal souls, while righteous, are by God himself beautified with the title of his own image and similitude.

Walter Raleigh

#36. Even such is Time, which takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.

Walter Raleigh

#37. Flatterers are the worst kind of traitors, for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing, but so shadow and paint thy follies and vices as thou shalt never, by their will, discover good from evil, or vice from virtue.

Walter Raleigh

#38. Thou may be sure that he who will tell thee of thy faults is thy friend, for he ventures thy dislike and doth hazard thy hatred.

Walter Raleigh

#39. An anthology is like all the plums and orange peel picked out of a cake.

Walter Raleigh

#40. Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

Walter Raleigh

#41. Fain would I, but I dare not; I dare, and yet I may not;
I may, although I care not, for pleasure when I play not.

Walter Raleigh

#42. Silence in love betrays more woe - Than words though ne'er so witty; A beggar that is dumb, you know, may challenge double pity.

Walter Raleigh

#43. Divine is Love and scorneth worldly pelf,
And can be bought with nothing but with self.

Walter Raleigh

#44. The Wood is that that makes the gallows tree;
The Weed is that that strings the hangman's bag;
The Wag, my pretty knave, betokens thee.

Walter Raleigh

#45. Covetous ambition, thinking all too little which presently it hath, supposeth itself to stand in need of that which it hath not.

Walter Raleigh

#46. 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.

Walter Raleigh

#47. There never was a man of solid understanding, whose apprehensions are sober, and by a pensive inspection advised, but that he hath found by an irresistible necessity one true God and everlasting being.

Walter Raleigh

#48. Remember, that if thou marry for beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which perchance will neither last nor please thee one year; and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all; for the desire dieth when it is attained, and the affection perisheth when it is satisfied.

Walter Raleigh

#49. It is observed in the course of worldly things, that men's fortunes are oftener made by their tongues than by their virtues; and more men's fortunes overthrown thereby than by vices.

Walter Raleigh

#50. Take special care that thou never trust any friend or servant with any matter that may endanger thine estate; for so shalt thou make thyself a bond-slave to him that thou trustest, and leave thyself always to his mercy.

Walter Raleigh

#51. Prevention is the daughter of intelligence.

Walter Raleigh

#52. A man must first govern himself ere he is fit to govern a family; and his family ere he be fit to bear the government of the commonwealth.

Walter Raleigh

#53. The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

Walter Raleigh

#54. Because all men are apt to flatter themselves, to entertain the addition of other men's praises is most perilous.

Walter Raleigh

#55. So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lieth.

Walter Raleigh

#56. Passions are liken'd best to floods and streams:
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb;
So, when affection yields discourse, it seems
The bottom is but shallow whence they come.
They that are rich in words, in words discover

Walter Raleigh

#57. God is absolutely good; and so, assuredly, the cause of all that is good.

Walter Raleigh

#58. Talking much is a sign of vanity, for the one who is lavish with words is cheap in deeds.

Walter Raleigh

#59. In a letter to a friend the thought is often unimportant, and the feeling, if it be only a desire to entertain him, every thing.

Walter Raleigh

#60. A wandering minstrel I A thing of shreds and patches Of ballads, songs and snatches And dreamy lullaby!

Walter Raleigh

#61. Be advised what thou dost discourse of, and what thou maintainest whether touching religion, state, or vanity; for if thou err in the first, thou shalt be accounted profane; if in the second, dangerous; if in the third, indiscreet and foolish.

Walter Raleigh

#62. [It is a basic principle of a tyrant] to unarm his people of weapons, money and all means whereby they resist his power.

Walter Raleigh

#63. Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust.

Walter Raleigh

#64. But in vain she did conjure him, To depart her presence so, Having a thousand tongues t' allure him And but one to bid him go. When lips invite, And eyes delight, And cheeks as fresh as rose in June, Persuade delay,
What boots to say Forego me now, come to me soon.

Walter Raleigh

#65. Men endure the losses that befall them by mere casualty with more patience than the damages they sustain by injustice.

Walter Raleigh

#66. But it is hard to know them from friends, they are so obsequious and full of protestations; for a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend.

Walter Raleigh

#67. Our bodies are but the anvils of pain and disease and our minds the hives of unnumbered cares.

Walter Raleigh

#68. The useful type of successful teacher is one whose main interest is the children, not the subject.

Walter Raleigh

#69. In a word, we may gather out of History a policy no less wise than I eternal; by the comparison and application of other mens fore-passed miseries with our own like errours and ill-deservings.

Walter Raleigh

#70. It is not truth, but opinion that can travel the world without a passport.

Walter Raleigh

#71. Give my scallop-shell of quiet, My staff of faith to walk upon, My scrip of joy, immortal diet, My bottle of salvation, My gown of glory, hope's true gage; And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.

Walter Raleigh

#72. Hatreds are the cinders of affection.

Walter Raleigh

#73. The flowers do fade, and wanton fields To wayward winter reckoning yields; A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall.

Walter Raleigh

#74. No mortal thing can bear so high a price, But that with mortal thing it may be bought.

Walter Raleigh

#75. So the heart be right, it is not matter which way the head lies

Walter Raleigh

#76. There is nothing more becoming any wise man, than to make choice of friends, for by them thou shalt be judged what thou art: let them therefore be wise and virtuous, and none of those that follow thee for gain; but make election rather of thy betters, than thy inferiors.

Walter Raleigh

#77. It is the nature of men having escaped one extreme, which by force they were constrained long to endure, to run headlong into the other extreme, forgetting that virtue doth always consist in the mean.

Walter Raleigh

#78. False love, desire, and beauty frail, adieu!
Dead is the root whence all these fancies grew.

Walter Raleigh

#79. Our taste must always be, more or less, the victim of our limitations, but we should beware of glorying in it, and, above all, we should beware of mistaking the aversions of timidity and sensibility for critical judgments.

Walter Raleigh

#80. There is no error which hath not some appearance of probability resembling truth, which, when men who study to be singular find out, straining reason, they then publish to the world matter of contention and jangling.

Walter Raleigh

#81. It is plain there is not in nature a point of stability to be found; everything either ascends or declines; when wars are ended abroad, sedition begins at home; and when men are freed from fighting for necessity, they quarrel through ambition.

Walter Raleigh

#82. All men are evil and will declare themselves to be so when occasion is offered.

Walter Raleigh

#83. Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth.

Walter Raleigh

#84. Let valour end my life!

Walter Raleigh

#85. But from this earth, this grave, this dust, My God shall raise me up, I trust.

Walter Raleigh

#86. Love likes not the falling fruit,
Nor the withered tree.

Walter Raleigh

#87. The longer it possesseth a man the more he will delight in it, and the older he groweth the more he shall be subject to it; for it dulleth the spirits, and destroyeth the body as ivy doth the old tree, or as the worm that engendereth in the kernal of the nut.

Walter Raleigh

#88. Who so desireth to know what will be hereafter, let him think of what is past, for the world hath ever been in a circular revolution; whatsoever is now, was heretofore; and things past or present, are no other than such as shall be again: Redit orbis in orbem.

Walter Raleigh

#89. The most divine light only shineth on those minds which are purged from all worldly dross and human uncleanliness.

Walter Raleigh

#90. This is a sharp medicine, but it is a physician for all diseases and miseries.

Walter Raleigh

#91. Hath triumphed over time, which besides it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over.

Walter Raleigh

#92. It would be an unspeakable advantage, both to the public and private, if men would consider that great truth, that no man is wise or safe but he that is honest.

Walter Raleigh

#93. There is nothing exempt from the peril of mutation; the earth, heavens, and whole world is thereunto subject.

Walter Raleigh

#94. 'Tis a sharp medicine, but it will cure all that ails you.

Walter Raleigh

#95. What dependence can I have on the alleged events of ancient history, when I find such difficulty in ascertaining the truth regarding a matter that has taken place only a few minutes ago, and almost in my own presence!

Walter Raleigh