“Tis the common disease of all your musicians that they know no mean, to be entreated, either to begin or end.”

Queen and huntress, chaste and fair Now the sun is laid to sleep, Seated in thy silver chair, State in wonted manner keep: Hesperus entreats thy light Goddess, excellently bright.

They, who know no evil, will suspect none.

Ods me I marle what pleasure or felicity they have in taking their roguish tobacco. It is good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of smoke and embers.

Wine it is the milk of Venus, And the poet’s horse accounted: Ply it and you all are mounted.

True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.

If you be sick, your own thoughts make you sick

True melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit.

If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man’s being a good poet without first being a good man.

I would rather have a plain down-right wisdom than a foolish and affected eloquence.

The Devil is an Ass , I do acknowledge it.

That old bald cheater, Time.

He that is respectless in his courses oft sells his reputation at cheap market.

Forbear, you things That stand upon the pinnacles of state, To boast your slippery height! when you do fall, You dash yourselves in pieces, ne’er to rise: And he that lends you pity, is not wise.

Ready writing makes not good writing, but good writing brings on ready writing.

I know no disease of the soul but ignorance, a pernicious evil, the darkener of man’s life, the disturber of his reason, and common confounder of truth.

It is less dishonor to hear imperfectly than to speak imperfectly. The ears are excused; the understanding is not.

If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.

Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don’t try and mean it. Nor prayers.

There is a kind of a cascading chain, … If one can’t sell, then that business doesn’t buy and that means the next business doesn’t sell, and the previous business doesn’t sell, and so on.

” Education does not mean jamming information into somebody’s head. Rather, it’s that ancient idea that all knowledge is within us; to teach is to help somebody pull it out of themselves.

What I’ve learned about teaching is to refer back to the root of that word, which is educo, which means “to pull from.

Incorporating it, somehow trying to work their way all together to a meaning of some kind, or at least a conclusion.

For a while in my teens, I was sure I had it. It was about getting to heaven. If heaven existed and lasted forever, then a mere lifetime spent scrupulously following orders was a small investment for an infinite payoff.

So (if) some cracker come and tell you ‘Well, my mother and father blood go back to the Mayflower,’ you better hold your pocket.