John Webster Quotes

55 Sourced Quotes

I dare truly and boldly say, that one years exercise therein to ingenious spirits, under able Masters, will produce more real and true fruit, than the studying Aristotelian Philosophy hath brought forth in many centuries. O that the Schools therefore would leave their idle, and fruitless speculations, and not be too proud to put their hands to the coals and furnace, where they might find ocular experiments to confute their fopperies, and produce effects that would be beneficial to all posterities.

John Webster
Prosperity doth bewitch men, seeming clear;
But seas do laugh, show white, when rocks are near.

John Webster
Glories, like glowworms, afar off shine bright,
But looked to near have neither heat nor light.

John Webster
I have caught
An everlasting cold; I have lost my voice
Most irrecoverably.

John Webster
There is not in nature a thing that makes man so deform'd, so beastly, as doth intemp'rate anger.

John Webster
'Tis just like a summer birdcage in a garden; the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair, and are in a consumption, for fear they shall never get out.

John Webster
Call for the robin redbreast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.

John Webster
Ferdinand: Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young. Bosola: I think not so; her infelicity Seemed to have years too many.

John Webster
Condemn you me for that the duke did love me?
So may you blame some fair and crystal river
For that some melancholic, distracted man
Hath drown'd himself in 't.

John Webster
But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men,
For with his nails he'll dig them up again.

John Webster
Is not old wine wholesomest, old pippins tooth-somest, old wood burn brightest, old linen wash whitest? Old soldiers, sweethearts, are surest, and old lovers are soundest.

John Webster
Vain the ambition of kings
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.

John Webster
That realm is never long in quiet, where the ruler is a soldier.

John Webster
Other sins only speak, murder shrieks out. The element of water moistens the earth, But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens.

John Webster
Of what is't fools make such vain keeping?
Sin their conception, their birth, weeping:
Their life, a general mist of error,
Their death, a hideous storm of terror.

John Webster
O, that it were possible,
We might but hold some two days' conference
With the dead!

John Webster
Lay this unto your breast: Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best.

John Webster
My soul, like to a ship in a black storm,
Is driven, I know not whither.

John Webster
Call for the robin-red-breast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.

John Webster
There's nothing of so infinite vexation
As man's own thoughts.

John Webster
Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright,
But looked to near, have neither heat nor light.

John Webster
Heaven-gates are not so highly arched
As princes' palaces; they that enter there
Must go upon their knees.

John Webster
'T is just like a summer bird-cage in a garden,—the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out.

John Webster
Leave thy idle questions;
I am i'th'way to study a long silence,
To prate were idle.

John Webster
How many ills spring from adultery? First the supreme law that is violated, Nobility oft stain'd with bastardy, Inheritance of land falsely possessed, The husband scorn'd, wife sham'd, and babes unbless'd.

John Webster