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Sir Walter Raleigh (1554 – 1618)


Famed as a writer, poet, spy, and explorer.
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Sir Walter Raleigh
Speaking much also is a sign of vanity; for he that is lavish in words is a niggard in deeds.
Raleigh quotes
Remember...that if thou marry for beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which perchance will never last nor please thee one year; and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all, for the desire dieth when it is attained, and the affection perisheth when it is satisfied.
Raleigh
War begets quiet, quiet idleness, idleness disorder, disorder ruin; likewise ruin order, order virtue, virtue glory and good fortune.




Raleigh Sir Walter quotes
Be advised what thou dost discourse of, and what thou maintainest whether touching religion, state, or vanity; for if thou err in the first, thou shalt be accounted profane; if in the second, dangerous; if in the third, indiscreet and foolish.
Raleigh Sir Walter
If she undervalue me,
What care I how fair she be?
Sir Walter Raleigh quotes
Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay.
Sir Walter Raleigh
The world itself is but a larger prison, out of which some are daily selected for execution.
Raleigh Sir Walter quotes
Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!
Raleigh
Fain would I, but I dare not; I dare, and yet I may not;
I may, although I care not, for pleasure when I play not.
Raleigh Sir Walter
So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing —
Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing —
Stab at thee he that will,
No stab the soul can kill.
Sir Walter Raleigh
But it is hard to know them [flatterers] from friends, they are so obsequious, and full of protestations; for as a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend.




Sir Walter Raleigh quotes
Silence in love bewrays more woe
Than words, though ne’er so witty:
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity.
Sir Walter Raleigh
It is the nature of men, having escaped one extreme, which by force they were constrained long to endure, to run headlong into the other extreme, forgetting that virtue doth always consist in the mean.
Raleigh quotes
Cowards fear to die; but courage stout,
Rather than live in snuff, will be put out.
Raleigh Sir Walter
Shall I, like an hermit, dwell
On a rock or in a cell?
Raleigh Sir Walter quotes
All histories do shew, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.
Sir Walter Raleigh
No man is wise or safe, but he that is honest.
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