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Ambition is the mind's immodesty.

William Davenant

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William Davenant
Age: 62 †
Born: 1606
Born: February 1
Died: 1668
Died: April 7
Playwright
Poet
Writer
Mind
Immodesty
Ambition

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Faith lights us through the dark to Deity.
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Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow Of slight beginnings to important ends.
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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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Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.
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Think not ambition wise, because 't is brave.
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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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What one cannot, another can.
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Generous souls Are still most subject to credulity.
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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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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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All jealousy must be strangled in its birth.
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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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For in a dearth of comforts, we art taught To be contented with the least.
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Fame, like the river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off.
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Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.
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Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run.
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Honor is the moral conscience of the great.
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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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