William Davenant

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What one cannot, another can.
- William Davenant
Collection: Ability
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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
Collection: Strong
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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
Collection: Design
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Had laws not been, we never had been blam'd; For not to know we sinn'd is innocence.
- William Davenant
Collection: Law
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Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.
- William Davenant
Collection: Sorrow
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Faith lights us through the dark to Deity.
- William Davenant
Collection: Faith
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Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.
- William Davenant
Collection: Glasses
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Anger is blood, poured and perplexed into froth; but malice is the wisdom of our wrath.
- William Davenant
Collection: Anger
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All jealousy must be strangled in its birth.
- William Davenant
Collection: Gratitude
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How beautiful is sorrow when it is dressed by virgin innocence! it makes felicity in others seem deformed.
- William Davenant
Collection: Beautiful
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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
Collection: Feet
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Ambition is the mind's immodesty.
- William Davenant
Collection: Ambition
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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
Collection: Wise
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Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run.
- William Davenant
Collection: Running
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Fame, like the river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off.
- William Davenant
Collection: Rivers
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It is the wit and policy of sin to hate those we have abused.
- William Davenant
Collection: Hate
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Think not ambition wise, because 't is brave.
- William Davenant
Collection: Wise
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Honor is the moral conscience of the great.
- William Davenant
Collection: Army
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The assembled souls of all that men held wise.
- William Davenant
Collection: Wise
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Aubade THE lark now leaves his wat'ry nest, And climbing shakes his dewy wings. He takes this window for the East, And to implore your light he sings- Awake, awake! the morn will never rise Till she can dress her beauty at your eyes. The merchant bows unto the seaman's star, The ploughman from the sun his season takes, But still the lover wonders what they are Who look for day before his mistress wakes. Awake, awake! break thro' your veils of lawn! Then draw your curtains, and begin the dawn!
- William Davenant
Collection: Stars
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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.
- William Davenant
Collection: Life