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Had laws not been, we never had been blam'd For not to know we sinn'd is innocence.

William Davenant

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William Davenant
Age: 62 †
Born: 1606
Born: February 1
Died: 1668
Died: April 7
Playwright
Poet
Writer
Never
Sinn
Innocence
Laws
Law

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Fame, like the river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off.
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For in a dearth of comforts, we art taught To be contented with the least.
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Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.
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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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Think not ambition wise, because 't is brave.
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Anger is blood, poured and perplexed into froth but malice is the wisdom of our wrath.
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Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run.
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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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The assembled souls of all that men held wise.
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Honor is the moral conscience of the great.
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Faith lights us through the dark to Deity.
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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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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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Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow Of slight beginnings to important ends.
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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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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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How beautiful is sorrow when it is dressed by virgin innocence! it makes felicity in others seem deformed.
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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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Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.
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Generous souls Are still most subject to credulity.
William Davenant