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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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For in a dearth of comforts, we art taught To be contented with the least.
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Small are the seeds fate does unheeded sow Of slight beginnings to important ends.
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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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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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What one cannot, another can.
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All jealousy must be strangled in its birth.
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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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Slow seems their speed whose thoughts before them run.
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The assembled souls of all that men held wise.
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Anger is blood, poured and perplexed into froth but malice is the wisdom of our wrath.
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Be not with honor's gilded baits beguil'd, Nor think ambition wise, because 'tis brave For though we like it, as a forward child, 'Tis so unsound, her cradle is the grave.
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It is the wit and policy of sin to hate those we have abused.
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Generous souls Are still most subject to credulity.
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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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Honor is the moral conscience of the great.
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Since knowledge is but sorrow's spy, It is not safe to know.
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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 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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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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Fame, like the river, is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off.
William Davenant