16th-century Playwright Quotes

William Shakespeare

Miguel de Cervantes

Lope de Vega

Ben Jonson

Pietro Aretino

John Fletcher

Philip Massinger

In short, virtue cannot live where envy reigns, nor liberality subsist with niggardliness.

Miguel de Cervantes

Thou art the cause, and most accursed effect.

William Shakespeare

Through his honor I conquered him. For these peasants carry their honor in their hands so that they may constantly consult it; this same honor that once felt so much at home in the city but now has taken refuge in a more rural setting.

Tirso de Molina

Into a slumber then I fell,
When fond imagination
Seemed to see, but could not tell
Her feature or her fashion.

Tell them, my soul, the fears that make me quake:
The smouldering brimstone and the burning lake,
Life feeding death, death ever life devouring,
Torments not moved, unheard, yet still roaring,
God lost, hell found,—ever, never begun.
Now bid me into flame from smoke to run!

William Alabaster

Wowers never speede well, that have a false harte.

Foul canker of fair virtuous action,
Vile blaster of the freshest blooms on earth,
Envys abhorrèd child, Detraction,
I here expose, to thy all-tainting breath,
The issue of my brain: snarl, rail, bark, bite,
Know that my spirit scorns Detraction's spite.

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

Giovanni Maria Cecchi

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.

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.

Love is a mighty engineer, Not Archimedes' skill could add One jot or title to the power Of the machines that Love controls.

As I am never better than when I am mad; then methinks I am a brave fellow; then I do wonders: but reason abuseth me, and there's the torment, there's the hell.

I'll imitate the pities of old Surgeons To this lost limb, who, ere they show their art, Cast one asleep, then cut the diseas'd part.

Thomas Middleton

Love in my bosom like a bee
Doth suck his sweet;
Now with his wings he plays with me,
Now with his feet.

Whilst we strive To live most free, we're caught in our own toils.

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

A powerful portfolio of physiological and behavioural evidence now exists to support the case that fish feel pain and that this feeling matters. In the face of such evidence, any argument to the contrary based on the claim that fish 'do not have the right sort of brain' can no longer be called scientific. It is just obstinate.

Aye, for 'twere absurd to think That Nature in the Earth bred gold, Perfect in the instant.

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

Before
We end our pilgrimage, 'tis fit that we
Should leave corruption, and foul sin, behind us,
But with wash'd feet and hands, the heathens dar' not
Enter their profane temples; and for me
To hope my passage to eternity
Can be made easy, till I have shook off
The burthen of my sins in free confession,
Aided with sorrow, and repentance for them,
Is against reason.

Philip Massinger