black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain.

Edmund Spenser

In one consort there sat cruel revenge and rancorous despite, disloyal treason and heart-burning hate.
EDMUND SPENSER

Burn Cruelty Death Hate Heart Oneself Revenge Treason
The Patron of true Holinesse, Foule Errour doth defeate: Hypocrisie him to entrappe, Doth to his home entreate.
EDMUND SPENSER

Himself Home Hypocrisy True
For evil deeds may better than bad words be borne.
EDMUND SPENSER

Action Bad Evil Home Word
I was promised on a time To have reason for my rhyme; From that time unto this season, I received nor rhyme nor reason.
EDMUND SPENSER

Myself Promise Reason Season Time
The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne.
EDMUND SPENSER

Action Gentle Mindset
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

Content Heart Love Queen Smile Yourself
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.
EDMUND SPENSER

Attraction Comfortable Eyes Grace Kind Sweet Thinking
Sluggish idleness–the nurse of sin.
EDMUND SPENSER

Freedom Sin Wasted Time
Man’s wretched state, That floures so fresh at morne, and fades at evening late.
EDMUND SPENSER

Evening Fade Fresh Man Morning Taste
The gentle mind by gentle deeds is known, For a man by nothing is so well betrayed As by his manners.
EDMUND SPENSER

Betrayal Man Manner Mindset
Unhappie Verse, the witnesse of my unhappie state, Make thy selfe fluttring wings of thy fast flying Thought.
EDMUND SPENSER

Fly Happiness Thinking Wings
Her angel’s face, As the great eye of heaven shined bright, And made a sunshine in the shady place.
EDMUND SPENSER

Angel Eyes Face Greatness Place Sunshine
For if good were not praised more than ill, None would choose goodness of his own free will.
EDMUND SPENSER

Choice Freedom Goodness Praise Sick Willing
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.
EDMUND SPENSER

Call Man Myself Right Virtue Wrong
Sweet breathing Zephyrus did softly play, A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay Hot Titan’s beams, which then did glister fair.
EDMUND SPENSER

Breathe Fair Light Play Soft Spirit Sweet
Who will not mercy unto others show, How can he mercy ever hope to have?
EDMUND SPENSER

Himself Hope Kindness Mercy
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.
EDMUND SPENSER

Compare Death Help Home Sleep
Bright as does the morning star appear, Out of the east with flaming locks bedight, To tell the dawning day is drawing near.
EDMUND SPENSER

Appearance Bed Bright Flame Light Morning Stars
So much more profitable and gracious is doctrine by example than by rule.
EDMUND SPENSER

Grace Profit Rule
A circle cannot fill a triangle, so neither can the whole world, if it were to be compassed, the heart of man; a man may as easily fill a chest with grace as the heart with gold. The air fills not the body, neither doth money the covetous mind of man.
EDMUND SPENSER

Body Easy Gold Heart Man Mindset World
Like as the culver on the bared bough Sits mourning for the absence of her mate.
EDMUND SPENSER

Absence Cry Friendship Herself Loss
Woe to the man that first did teach the cursed steel to bite in his own flesh, and make way to the living spirit!
EDMUND SPENSER

Flesh Live Man Spirit Teaching Yourself
All flesh doth frailty breed!
EDMUND SPENSER

Body Flesh Fragile
So let us love, dear Love, like as we ought; Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
EDMUND SPENSER

Lesson Love Teaching
From good to bad, and from bad to worse, From worse unto that is worst of all, And then return to his former fall.
EDMUND SPENSER

Bad Fall Goodness Himself Return Worst
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.
EDMUND SPENSER

Flower Growth Herself Sweet
For deeds to die, however nobly done, And thoughts of men to as themselves decay, But wise words taught in numbers for to run, Recorded by the Muses, live for ay.
EDMUND SPENSER

Action Death Live Man Thinking Wisdom Word

And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Edmund Spenser Quotes