Edmund Spenser Quotes

137 Sourced Quotes

To kirk the nearer, from God more far,
Has been an old-said saw.
And he that strives to touch the stars,
Oft stumbles at a straw.

Edmund Spenser
What more felicity can fall to creature,
Than to enjoy delight with liberty.

Edmund Spenser
Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas,
Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.

Edmund Spenser
Her angel's face
As the great eye of heaven shined bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place.

Edmund Spenser
The woods shall to me answer, and my Echo ring.

Edmund Spenser
But angels come to lead frail minds to rest in chaste desires, on heavenly beauty bound. You frame my thoughts, and fashion me within; you stop my tongue, and teach my heart to speak.

Edmund Spenser
What man that sees the ever-whirling wheel
Of Change, the which all mortal things doth sway,
But that thereby doth find, and plainly feel,
How Mutability in them doth play
Her cruel sports, to many men's decay?

Edmund Spenser
For all that faire is, is by nature good;
That is a signe to know the gentle blood.

Edmund Spenser
Full little knowest thou that hast not tried, What hell it is, in suing long to bide: To lose good days, that might be better spent; To waste long nights in pensive discontent; To speed today, to be put back tomorrow; To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow.

Edmund Spenser
But as it falleth, in the gentlest hearts Imperious love hath highest set his throne, And tyrannizeth in the bitter smarts Of them, that to him buxom are and prone.

Edmund Spenser
That darksome cave they enter, where they find
That cursed man, low sitting on the ground,
Musing full sadly in his sullein mind.

Edmund Spenser
To kerke the narre from God more farre,
Has bene an old-sayd sawe;
And he that strives to touche a starre
Oft stombles at a strawe.

Edmund Spenser
Me seemes the world is runne quite out of square,
From the first point of his appointed sourse,
And being once amisse growes daily wourse and wourse.

Edmund Spenser
Epitaph:
That we spent, we had:
That we gave, we have:
That we left, we lost.

Edmund Spenser
At last, the golden orientall gate Of greatest heaven gan to open fayre, And Phoebus, fresh as brydegrome to his mate, Came dauncing forth, shaking his dewie hayre; And hurls his glistring beams through gloomy ayre.

Edmund Spenser
Like as the culver on the bared bough
Sits mourning for the absence of her mate

Edmund Spenser
It often falls, in course of common life, that right long time is overborne of wrong.

Edmund Spenser
Fierce warres and faithfull loves shall moralize my song.

Edmund Spenser
And is there care in Heaven? And is there love
In heavenly spirits to these Creatures bace?

Edmund Spenser
What man so wise, what earthly wit so ware,
As to descry the crafty cunning train,
By which deceit doth mask in visor fair,
And cast her colours dyed deep in grain,
To seem like truth, whose shape she well can feign,
And fitting gestures to her purpose frame,
The guiltless man with guile to entertain?

Edmund Spenser
Those that were up themselves, kept others low;
Those that were low themselves, held others hard;
He suffered them to ryse or greater grow;
But every one did strive his fellow down to throw.

Edmund Spenser
For all that Nature by her mother-wit
Could frame in earth.

Edmund Spenser
My Love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?

Edmund Spenser
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares; To eat thy heart through comfortless despairs; To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run, To spend, to give, to want, to be undone. Unhappy wight, born to disastrous end, That doth his life in so long tendance spend.

Edmund Spenser
Ah! when will this long weary day have end,
And lend me leave to come unto my love?

Edmund Spenser