Top 100 Quotes About Edmund Spenser
#1. It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor. - Edmund Spenser
Anthony Robbins
#2. Conrad placed on the title page an epigraph taken from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene:
"Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please"
This also became Conrad's epitaph.
Joseph Conrad
#3. Rising glory occasions the greatest envy, as kindling fire the greatest smoke.
Edmund Spenser
#4. Laws ought to be fashioned unto the manners and conditions of the people whom they are meant to benefit, and not imposed upon them according to the simple rule of right.
Edmund Spenser
#6. Her angel's face, As the great eye of heaven shined bright, And made a sunshine in the shady place.
Edmund Spenser
#7. [...] one louing howre
For many yeares of sorrow can dispence:
A dram of sweet is worth a pound of sowre
Edmund Spenser
#9. In one consort there sat cruel revenge and rancorous despite, disloyal treason and heart-burning hate.
Edmund Spenser
#10. Change still doth reign, and keep the greater sway.
Edmund Spenser
#11. Hasty wrath and heedless hazardy do breed repentance late and lasting infamy.
Edmund Spenser
#12. All love is sweet Given or returned And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
Edmund Spenser
#13. Fierce warres and faithfull loves shall moralize my song.
Edmund Spenser
#14. Full many mischiefs follow cruel wrath;
Abhorred bloodshed and tumultuous strife
Unmanly murder and unthrifty scath,
Bitter despite, with rancor's rusty knife;
And fretting grief the enemy of life;
All these and many evils more, haunt ire.
Edmund Spenser
#16. And through the hall there walked to and fro A jolly yeoman, marshall of the same, Whose name was Appetite; he did bestow Both guestes and meate, whenever in they came, And knew them how to order without blame.
Edmund Spenser
#17. For that which all men then did virtue call, Is now called vice; and that which vice was hight, Is now hight virtue, and so used of all: Right now is wrong, and wrong that was is right
Edmund Spenser
#19. Why then should witless man so much misweene
That nothing is but that which he hath seene?
Edmund Spenser
#20. Man's wretched state, That floures so fresh at morne, and fades at evening late.
Edmund Spenser
#21. I trow that countenance cannot lie,Whose thoughts are legible in the eie.
Edmund Spenser
#24. Who would ever care to do brave deed,
Or strive in virtue others to excel,
If none should yield him his deserved meed
Due praise, that is the spur of doing well?
For if good were not praised more than ill,
None would choose goodness of his own free will.
Edmund Spenser
#26. Good Hobbinoll, what garres thee greete?
What! hath some wolfe thy tender lambes ytorne?
Or is thy bagpype broke, that soundes so sweete?
Or art thou of thy loved lasse forlorne?
Edmund Spenser
#28. Death is an equall doome
To good and bad, the common In of rest.
Edmund Spenser
#29. All sorts of flowers the which on earth do spring
In goodly colours gloriously arrayed;
Go to my love, where she is careless laid
Edmund Spenser
#31. To be wise and eke to love,
Is granted scarce to gods above.
Edmund Spenser
#32. In youth, before I waxe' d old, The blind boy,Venus' baby, For want of cunning made me bold, In bitter hive to grope for honey.
Edmund Spenser
#33. O happy earth, Whereon thy innocent feet doe ever tread!
Edmund Spenser
#34. Ah! when will this long weary day have end,
And lende me leave to come unto my love?
- Epithalamion
Edmund Spenser
#35. Make haste therefore, sweet love, whilst it is prime,
For none can call again the passed time.
Edmund Spenser
#36. What more felicitie can fall to creature Than to enjoy delight with libertie, And to be lord of all the workes of Nature, To raine in th' aire from earth to highest skie, To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature.
Edmund Spenser
#37. For take thy ballaunce if thou be so wise, And weigh the winds that under heaven doth blow; Or weigh the light that in the east doth rise; Or weigh the thought that from man's mind doth flow.
Edmund Spenser
#39. The merry cuckow, messenger of Spring, His trumpet shrill hath thrice already sounded.
Edmund Spenser
#40. Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small.
Edmund Spenser
#41. Woe to the man that first did teach the cursed steel to bite in his own flesh, and make way to the living spirit!
Edmund Spenser
#42. For we by conquest, of our soveraine might,And by eternall doome of Fate's decree,Have wonne the Empire of the Heavens bright.
Edmund Spenser
#43. But angels come to lead frail minds to rest in chaste desires, on heavenly beauty bound. You frame my thoughts, and fashion me within; you stop my tongue, and teach my heart to speak.
Edmund Spenser
#44. Who will not mercy unto others show, How can he mercy ever hope to have?
Edmund Spenser
#45. But as it falleth, in the gentlest hearts Imperious love hath highest set his throne, And tyrannizeth in the bitter smarts Of them, that to him buxom are and prone.
Edmund Spenser
#46. For evil deeds may better than bad words be borne.
Edmund Spenser
#47. So passeth, in the passing of a day,
Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre
Edmund Spenser
#48. It is the mind that maketh good of ill, that maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
Edmund Spenser
#50. The ever-whirling wheele Of Change, to which all mortal things doth sway.
Edmund Spenser
#51. But O the exceeding grace
Of highest God, that loves his creatures so,
And all his works with mercy doth embrace,
That blessed angels, he sends to and fro,
To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe.
Edmund Spenser
#52. Yet gold all is not, that doth gold seem,
Nor all good knights, that shake well spear and shield:
The worth of all men by their end esteem,
And then praise, or due reproach them yield.
Edmund Spenser
#53. I learned have, not to despise,What ever thing seemes small in common eyes.
Edmund Spenser
#54. The gentle mind by gentle deeds is known,
For a man by nothing is so well betrayed
As by his manners.
Edmund Spenser
#55. Beauty is not, as fond men misdeem, an outward show of things that only seem.
Edmund Spenser
#56. Fly from wrath; sad be the sights and bitter fruits of war; a thousand furies wait on wrathful swords.
Edmund Spenser
#57. For easy things, that may be got at will, Most sorts of men do set but little store.
Edmund Spenser
#58. For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Edmund Spenser
#60. And he that strives to touch the stars
Oft stumbles at a straw.
Edmund Spenser
#61. Men, when their actions succeed not as they would, are always ready to impute the blame thereof to heaven, so as to excuse their own follies.
Edmund Spenser
#62. Fondnesse it were for any being free,
To covet fetters, though they golden bee.
Edmund Spenser
#63. Me seemes the world is runne quite out of square,From the first point of his appointed sourse,And being once amisse growes daily wourse and wourse.
Edmund Spenser
#64. Joy may you have and gentle hearts content
Of your loves couplement:
And let faire Venus, that is Queene of love,
With her heart-quelling Sonne upon you smile
Edmund Spenser
#66. My Love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Edmund Spenser
#67. He oft finds med'cine, who his griefe imparts;
But double griefs afflict concealing harts,
As raging flames who striveth to supresse.
Edmund Spenser
#68. For all that faire is, is by nature good;That is a signe to know the gentle blood.
Edmund Spenser
#69. So let us love, dear Love, like as we ought;
Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
Edmund Spenser
#70. In vain he seeketh others to suppress, Who hath not learn'd himself first to subdue.
Edmund Spenser
#71. He that strives to touch the starts, oft stumbles at a straw.
Edmund Spenser
#72. For of the soule the bodie forme doth take;
For the soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.
Edmund Spenser
#73. Unhappie Verse, the witnesse of my unhappie state,
Make thy selfe fluttring wings of thy fast flying
Thought
Edmund Spenser
#74. Aye me, how many perils do enfold
The righteous man, to make him daily fall?
Were not, that heavenly grace doth him uphold,
And steadfast truth acquite him out of all.
Edmund Spenser
#75. No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd, No arborett with painted blossoms drest And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al arownd.
Edmund Spenser
#76. All that in this world is great or gay,
Doth, as a vapor, vanish and decay.
Edmund Spenser
#77. The poets' scrolls will outlive the monuments of stone. Genius survives; all else is claimed by death.
Edmund Spenser
#78. The man whom nature's self had made to mock herself, and truth to imitate.
Edmund Spenser
#79. Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.
Edmund Spenser
#81. I was promised on a time
To have reason for my rhyme;
From that time unto this season,
I received nor rhyme nor reason.
Edmund Spenser
#82. Yet is there one more cursed than they all,
That canker-worm, that monster, jealousie,
Which eats the heart and feeds upon the gall,
Turning all love's delight to misery,
Through fear of losing his felicity.
Edmund Spenser
#83. I hate the day, because it lendeth light
To see all things, but not my love to see.
Edmund Spenser
#84. Vaine is the vaunt, and victory unjust, that more to mighty hands, then rightfull cause doth trust.
Edmund Spenser
#88. How many perils doe enfold The righteous man to make him daily fall.
Edmund Spenser
#90. At last, the golden orientall gate Of greatest heaven gan to open fayre, And Phoebus, fresh as brydegrome to his mate, Came dauncing forth, shaking his dewie hayre; And hurls his glistring beams through gloomy ayre.
Edmund Spenser
#92. Bright as does the morning star appear,
Out of the east with flaming locks bedight,
To tell the dawning day is drawing near.
Edmund Spenser
#93. Hark, how the cheerful birds do chaunt their lays, and carol of love's praise.
Edmund Spenser
#94. The Patron of true Holinesse,
Foule Errour doth defeate:
Hypocrisie him to entrappe,
Doth to his home entreate.
Edmund Spenser
#95. Much more profitable and gracious is doctrine by example than by rule.
Edmund Spenser
#96. For deeds to die, however nobly done, And thoughts of men to as themselves decay, But wise words taught in numbers for to run, Recorded by the Muses, live for ay.
Edmund Spenser
#99. Sweet breathing Zephyrus did softly play,
A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay
Hot Titan's beams, which then did glister fair
Edmund Spenser
#100. For next to Death is Sleepe to be compared;
Therefore his house is unto his annext:
Here Sleepe, ther Richesse, and hel-gate them both betwext.
Edmund Spenser
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