William Davenant Quotes

11 Sourced Quotes

Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy,
It is not safe to know.

William Davenant
So nature, when she fruit designs, thinks fit
By beauteous blossoms to proceed to it;
And whilst she does accomplish all the spring,
Birds to her secret operations sing.

William Davenant
Had laws not been, we never had been blamed;
For not to know we sin is innocence.

William Davenant
For angling-rod he took a sturdy oake;
For line, a cable that in storm ne'er broke;
His hooke was such as heads the end of pole
To pluck down house ere fire consumes it whole;
The hook was baited with a dragon's tale,—
And then on rock he stood to bob for whale.

William Davenant
How much pleasure they lose (and even the pleasures of heroic poesy are not unprofitable) who take away the liberty of a poet, and fetter his feet in the shackles of a historian.

William Davenant
In every grave make room, make room!
The world's at an end, and we come, we come.

William Davenant
For I must go where lazy Peace
Will hide her drowsy head;
And, for the sport of kings, increase
The number of the dead.

William Davenant
The lark now leaves his wat'ry nest
And, climbing, shakes his dewy wings.

William Davenant
I shall ask leave to desist, when I am interrupted by so great an experiment as dying.

William Davenant
You that so wisely studious are To measure and to trace each Starr, How swift they travaile, and how farr, Now number your celestiall store, Planets, or lesser lights, and trie If in the face of all the skie You count so many as before!

William Davenant
Immense as Whales, the motion of whose vast bodies can in a peaceful calm trouble the Ocean till it boyl...

William Davenant