English Translator Quotes

Christopher Marlowe

Richard Hakluyt

Lord Alfred Douglas

Alan Hollinghurst

George Chapman

Lancelot Andrewes

Frances Brooke

I am the Love that dare not speak its name.

Lord Alfred Douglas

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.

At the same time the Muslims are commanded to exercise self-restraint as much as possible. Force
is a dangerous weapon. It may have to be used for self-defense or self-preservation, but we must
always remember that self-restraint is pleasing in the eyes of Allah. Even when we are fighting, it
should be for a principle not out of passion.

Abdullah Yusuf Ali

Venerable Mother Toothache
Climb down from the white battlements,
Stop twisting in your yellow fingers
The fourfold rope of nerves;
And tomorrow I will give you a tot of whisky
To hold in your cupped hands,
A garland of anise flowers,
And three cloves like nails.

John Heath-Stubbs

Hast thou not seen?
All that is needful hath been
Granted in what he ordaineth.

Catherine Winkworth

The hollow sea-shell, which for years hath stood On dusty shelves, when held against the ear Proclaims its stormy parent, and we hear The faint, far murmur of the breaking flood. We hear the sea. The Sea? It is the blood In our own veins, impetuous and near.

Eugene Lee-Hamilton

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 state of rest is ungraceful; all nature is most beautiful in motion: trees agitated by the wind, a ship under sail, a horse in the course, a fine woman dancing.

Ah, dearer than my soul…
Dearer than light, or life, or fame.

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

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

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

Now that I had actually made love, more astonishingly now that I had been made love to, the fantasies were subtly undermined.

Alan Hollinghurst

From having once been a peaceful shepherd, [he] had become the terror of southern Italy. [...] The usual occupation of Crocco's band was robbery of the wealthy Italians of the vicinity, battles with the Italian troops, and the seizure and robbery of rich foreigners, for whose deliverance heavy ransoms were demanded. When a detachment of troops was sent against them, they showed considerable courage. As they knew the country well, with its hiding-places and points of vantage, it was not easy to capture them.
As the country moaned and cursed at it's weeping fate... The Devil himself tempted Italy to follow it's lure of rule and conquest but in the end he has disappeared leaving a weeping country to pick up the ashes.

Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer

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.

In the reign of Charles II. a certain worthy divine at Whitehall thus addressed himself to the auditory at the conclusion of his sermon: "In short, if you don't live up to the precepts of the Gospel, but abandon yourselves to your irregular appetites, you must expect to receive your reward in a certain place which 't is not good manners to mention here."

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

I am born for God only. Christ is nearer to me than father, or mother, or sister - a near relation, a more affectionate Friend; and I rejoice to follow Him, and to love Him. Blessed Jesus! Thou art all I want - a forerunner to me in all I ever shall go through as a Christian, a minister, or a missionary....

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

Christopher Marlowe

Writers of either gender ought to be able to do the opposite sex-that's one basic test of competence, after all.