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Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.

William Davenant

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William Davenant
Age: 62 †
Born: 1606
Born: February 1
Died: 1668
Died: April 7
Playwright
Poet
Writer
Wherein
Calamity
Glass
Glasses
Truly
Perfect

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Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.
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Ambition's monstrous stomach does increase By eating, and it fears to starve, unless It still may feed, and all it sees devour Ambition is not tir'd with toll nor cloy'd with power.
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O harmless Death! whom still the valiant brave, The wise expect, the sorrowful invite, And all the good embrace, who know the grave A short dark passage to eternal light.
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Actions rare and sudden do commonly proceed from fierce necessity, of else from some oblique design, which is ashamed to show itself in the public road.
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Had laws not been, we never had been blam'd For not to know we sinn'd is innocence.
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To be rich be diligent move on Like heav'ns great movers that enrich the earth Whose moment's sloth would show the world undone And make the spring straight bury all her birth. Rich are the diligent who can command Time--nature's stock.
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Fame, like the river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off.
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All jealousy must be strangled in its birth.
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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.
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Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run.
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It is the wit and policy of sin to hate those we have abused.
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For in a dearth of comforts, we art taught To be contented with the least.
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Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow Of slight beginnings to important ends.
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Think not ambition wise, because 't is brave.
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All slander must still be strangled in its birth, or time will soon conspire to make it strong enough to overcome the truth.
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Faith lights us through the dark to Deity.
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Anger is blood, poured and perplexed into froth but malice is the wisdom of our wrath.
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Honor is the moral conscience of the great.
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Ambition is the mind's immodesty.
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Go! dive into the Southern Sea, and when Th'ast found, to trouble the nice sight of men, A swelling pearl, and such whose single worth Boasts all the wonders which the seas bring forth, Give it Endymion's love, whose ev'ry tear Would more enrich the skilful jeweller.
William Davenant