For if good were not praised more than ill, None would choose goodness of his own free will.
EDMUND SPENSERThe noblest mind the best contentment has.
More Edmund Spenser Quotes
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Me seems the world is run quite out of square,From the first point of his appointed source,And being once amiss grows daily worse and worse.
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Discord oft in music makes the sweeter lay.
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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.
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For easy things, that may be got at will, Most sorts of men do set but little store.
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To be wise and eke to love, Is granted scarce to gods above.
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All sorts of flowers the which on earth do spring In goodly colours gloriously arrayed; Go to my love, where she is careless laid.
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Those that were up themselves, kept others low; Those that were low themselves, held others hard; He suffered them to ryse or greater grow; But every one did strive his fellow down to throw.
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All flesh doth frailty breed!
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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?
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What more felicity can fall to creature, than to enjoy delight with liberty?
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And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain.
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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.
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No dainty flower or herbs that grows on ground, No arborett with painted blossoms drest And smelling sweet, but there it might be found To bud out fair, and throw her sweet smells all around.
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Who will not mercy unto others show, How can he mercy ever hope to have?
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Through knowledge we behold the world’s creation, How in his cradle first he fostered was; And judge of Nature’s cunning operation, How things she formed of a formless mass.
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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.
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All love is sweet Given or returned And its familiar voice wearies not ever.
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Fondnesse it were for any being free, To covet fetters, though they golden bee.
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Woe to the man that first did teach the cursed steel to bite in his own flesh, and make way to the living spirit!
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A sweet attractive kind of grace, A full assurance given by looks, Continual comfort in a face, The lineaments of Gospel books– I trow that countenance cannot lye Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.
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The Patron of true Holinesse, Foule Errour doth defeate: Hypocrisie him to entrappe, Doth to his home entreate.
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Ah! when will this long weary day have end, And lende me leave to come unto my love? – Epithalamion
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Man’s wretched state, That floures so fresh at morne, and fades at evening late.
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Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small.
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And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain.
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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