16th-century Author Quotes

A woman friend! He that believes that weakness, Steers in a stormy night without a compass.

Well says the proverb, that it is better to live with wild beasts in caves, than in the same house with a cross-grained and quarrelsome woman.

Agnolo Firenzuola

Some have too much, yet still do crave;
I little have, and seek no more:
They are but poor, though much they have,
And I am rich with little store:
They poor, I rich; they beg, I give;
They lack, I have; they pine, I live.

Even so the Blood (bred of good nourishment) By divers Pipes to all the body sent, Turns here to Bones there changes into Nerves; Here is made Marrow, there for Muscles serves.

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas

Thrice happy he, who by some shady grove, Far from the clamorous world; doth live his own; Though solitary, who is not alone, But doth converse with that eternal love.

William Drummond of Hawthornden

O God! O God! that it were possible To undo things done; to call back yesterday! That Time could turn up his swift sandy glass, To untell the days, and to redeem these hours.

Let man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this, The intelligence that moves, devotion is.

A good physician comes to thee in the shape of an angel, and therefore let him boldly take thee by the hand, for he has been in God's garden, gathering herbs and sovereign roots to cure thee. The good physician deals in simples and will be simply honest with thee in they preservation.

I do love thee as my lambs
Are belovėd of their dams

Henry Constable

When the ground is soft
It may be worked with any kind of tool.

Giovanni Maria Cecchi

Now let the judging Reader mark what Rex
The Idol Gold (which all the World ador'th)
Plays both in Poor and Rich: by Money's Thurst
All Laws and Tyes (Divine, and Humane) burst.

Luís de Camões

Curious wits, not be a slave of one science, or dwell altogether in one subject as most do, but [should] rove abroad, to have an oar in every mans boat, to taste of every dish, and sip of every cup,

True 'tis, when unexpectedly we find
The beautiful, it charms the healthy mind.

Francesco Bracciolini

Let him look to it, who is pleased with the game of Tarocco, that the only signification of this word Tarocco, is stupid, foolish, simple, fit only to be used by Bakers, Coblers, and the vulgar, to play at most for the fourth part of a Carlino, at Tarocchi, or at Trionfi, or any Sminckiate whatever: which in every way signifies only foolery and idleness, feasting the eye with the Sun, and the Moon, and the twelve (signs) as children do.

Francesco Berni

My flocks feed not, my ewes breed not,
My rams speed not, all is amiss.

Richard Barnfield

Fair summer droops, droop men and beasts therefore: So fair a summer look for never more. All good things vanish, less than in a day, Peace, plenty, pleasure, suddenly decay. Go not yet away, bright soul of the sad year; The earth is hell when thou leav'st to appear.

The best thing for a man to do is to be born and, being born, to die at once.

Wowers never speede well, that have a false harte.

As order is heavenly, where quiet is had, so error is hell, or a mischief as bad.

Not for no cold did freeze,
Nor any cloud beguile
Th'eternal flowering spring

And look upon you with ten thousand eyes
Till heaven wax'd blind, and till the world were done.

Joshua Sylvester

I cannot eat but little meat,
My stomach is not good;
But sure I think that I can drink
With him that wears a hood.
Though I go bare, take ye no care,
I nothing am a-cold;
I stuff my skin so full within
Of jolly good ale and old.

William Stevenson

The Lord descended from above
And bow'd the heavens high;
And underneath his feet he cast
The darkness of the sky.

On cherubs and on cherubims
Full royally he rode;
And on the wings of all the winds
Came flying all abroad.

Thomas Sternhold

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;
Love is the fire and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls.

Robert Southwell

Wit is brushwood; judgment, timber; the one gives the greatest flame, the other yields the most durable heat; and both meeting make the best fire.

Thomas Overbury