Quote

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.

William Davenant

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William Davenant
Age: 62 †
Born: 1606
Born: February 1
Died: 1668
Died: April 7
Playwright
Poet
Writer
Shows
Rare
Else
Ashamed
Actions
Oblique
Road
Proceed
Design
Commonly
Public
Fierce
Show
Sudden
Action
Necessity

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Generous souls Are still most subject to credulity.
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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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Ambition is the mind's immodesty.
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Anger is blood, poured and perplexed into froth but malice is the wisdom of our wrath.
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Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.
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What one cannot, another can.
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Fame, like the river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off.
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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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How beautiful is sorrow when it is dressed by virgin innocence! it makes felicity in others seem deformed.
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Faith lights us through the dark to Deity.
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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.
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Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow Of slight beginnings to important ends.
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Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.
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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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The assembled souls of all that men held wise.
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All jealousy must be strangled in its birth.
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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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It is the wit and policy of sin to hate those we have abused.
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Honor is the moral conscience of the great.
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