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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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Had laws not been, we never had been blam'd For not to know we sinn'd is innocence.
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Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow Of slight beginnings to important ends.
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Generous souls Are still most subject to credulity.
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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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For in a dearth of comforts, we art taught To be contented with the least.
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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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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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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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Fame, like the river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off.
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Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run.
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All jealousy must be strangled in its birth.
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The assembled souls of all that men held wise.
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Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.
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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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Ambition is the mind's immodesty.
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Faith lights us through the dark to Deity.
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It is the wit and policy of sin to hate those we have abused.
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Anger is blood, poured and perplexed into froth but malice is the wisdom of our wrath.
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How beautiful is sorrow when it is dressed by virgin innocence! it makes felicity in others seem deformed.
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What one cannot, another can.
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