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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
Immodesty
Ambition
Mind

More quotes by William Davenant

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Generous souls Are still most subject to credulity.
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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.
William Davenant
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Anger is blood, poured and perplexed into froth but malice is the wisdom of our wrath.
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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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It is the wit and policy of sin to hate those we have abused.
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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.
William Davenant
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The assembled souls of all that men held wise.
William Davenant
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Faith lights us through the dark to Deity.
William Davenant
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All jealousy must be strangled in its birth.
William Davenant
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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.
William Davenant
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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.
William Davenant
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Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.
William Davenant
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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.
William Davenant
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Fame, like the river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off.
William Davenant
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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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How beautiful is sorrow when it is dressed by virgin innocence! it makes felicity in others seem deformed.
William Davenant
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Honor is the moral conscience of the great.
William Davenant
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Think not ambition wise, because 't is brave.
William Davenant
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Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run.
William Davenant
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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