16th-century Translator Quotes

Christopher Marlowe

William Tyndale

François de Malherbe

Richard Hakluyt

George Chapman

Lancelot Andrewes

Perfect happiness, by princes sought, Is not with birth born, nor exchequers bought.

Ah fair Zenocrate, divine Zenocrate, Fair is too foul an epithet for thee.

Christopher Marlowe

To see how Christ was prophesied and described therein, consider and mark, how that the kid or lamb must be with out spot or blemish; and so was Christ only of all mankind, in the sight of God and of his law.

William Tyndale

And a rose, she lived as roses do, the space of a morn.

François de Malherbe

I am on the side of those who believe that vice comes from stupidity and consequently that the nearer one draws to wisdom the farther one gets from vice.

Marie de Gournay

No greater glory can be handed down than to conquer the barbarian, to recall the savage and the pagan to civility, to draw the ignorant within the orbit of reason, and to fill with reverence for divinity the godless and the ungodly.

Richard Hakluyt

Fair maid, white and red,
Comb me smooth, and stroke my head;
And every hair a sheave shall be,
And every sheave a golden tree.

There is no part of the whole course of our Saviour Christ's life or death, but it is well worthy our looking on; and from each part in it there goeth virtue to do us good.

Lancelot Andrewes

The throne of Cupid had an easy stair,
His bark is fit to sail with every wind,
The breach he makes no wisdom can repair.

Will you have all in all for prose and verse? Take the miracle of our age, Sir Philip Sidney.

There be three speciall notes necessary to be obserued in the framing of our accustomed English Ryme. The first is, that one meeter or verse be aunswerable to an other, in equall number of feete or syllables, or proportionable to the tune whereby it is to be reade or measured. The seconde, to place the words in such sorte as none of them be wrested contrary to the naturall inclination or affectation of the same, or more truely the true quantity thereof. The thyrd, to make them fall together mutually in Ryme, that is, in wordes of like sounde, but so as the wordes be not disordered for the Rymes sake, nor the sence hindered.

A wise physician will not give physic, but upon necessity, and first try medicinal diet, before he proceed to medicinal cure.

Arnoldus Arlenius