“So passeth, in the passing of a day, Of mortal life the leaf, the bud, the flower.”

Beauty is not, as fond men misdeem, an outward show of things that only seem.

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?

In vain he seeketh others to suppress, Who hath not learn’d himself first to subdue.

Ah! when will this long weary day have end, And lende me leave to come unto my love? – Epithalamion

The man whom nature’s self had made to mock herself, and truth to imitate.

And he that strives to touch the stars Oft stumbles at a straw.

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.

For evil deeds may better than bad words be borne.

Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time.

All sorts of flowers the which on earth do spring In goodly colours gloriously arrayed; Go to my love, where she is careless laid.

Full little knowest thou that hast not tried, What hell it is in suing long to bide: To loose good dayes, that might be better spent; To waste long nights in pensive discontent; To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow; To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.

How many perils doe enfold The righteous man to make him daily fall.

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.

Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small.

The gentle mind by gentle deeds is known, For a man by nothing is so well betrayed As by his manners.

Waking love suffereth no sleepe: Say, that raging love dothe appall the weake stomacke: Say, that lamenting love marreth the musicall.

He that hath light within their own breast, may sit in the centre and enjoy bright day.

Never a day passes but that I do myself the honor to commune with some of nature’s varied forms.

Full little knowest thou that hast not tried, What hell it is in suing long to bide: To loose good dayes, that might be better spent; To waste long nights in pensive discontent; To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow; To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.

Though leaves are many, the root is one; Through all the lying days of my youth I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun Now I may wither into the truth.

Nowhere else than upon the sea do the days, weeks, and months fall away quicker into the past. They seem to be left astern as easily as the light air-bubbles in the swirls of the ship’s wake.

The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day.

Live every day as your last, because one of these days, it will be.

It is one of the enjoyments of retirement that you are able to drift through the day at your own pace, easy in the knowledge that you have put hard work and achievement behind you.