“Water and air He for the Tenor chose, Earth made the Base, the Treble Fame arose,”

Man is too near all kinds of beasts,–a fawning dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture.

I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that

The motions strait, and round, and swift, and slow, And short and long, were mixt and woven so, Did in such artful Figures smoothly fall, As made this decent measur’d dance of all. And this is Musick.

All the world’s bravery that delights our eyes is but thy several liveries.

Gold begets in brethren hate; Gold in families debate; Gold does friendship separate; Gold does civil wars create.

Why to mute fish should’st thou thyself discoverAnd not to me, thy no less silent lover?

Enjoy the present hour, Be thankful for the past, And neither fear nor wish Th’ approaches of the last.

Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high, Thou who art under ground to lie? Thou sow’st and plantest, but no fruit must see, For death, alas! is reaping thee.

There Daphne’s Lover stopped, and thought it much The very leaves of her to touch: But Harvey, our Apollo, stopp’d not so; Into the Bark and Root he after her did go!

His time’s forever, everywhere his place.

I confess I love littleness almost in all things. A little convenient estate, a little cheerful house, a little company, and a little feast.

Vain, weak-built isthmus, which dost proudly rise Up between two eternities!

Neither the praise nor the blame is our own.

Does not the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy Land yield incomparably more poetic variety than the voyages of Ulysses or Aeneas?

There have been fewer friends on earth than kings.

For the whole world, without a native home, Is nothing but a prison of larger room.

Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the individual and society.