Sir Walter Raleigh (1554 – 1618)
Famed as a writer, poet, spy, and explorer.
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.
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy Love.
Speaking much also is a sign of vanity; for he that is lavish in words is a niggard in deeds.
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.
War begets quiet, quiet idleness, idleness disorder, disorder ruin; likewise ruin order, order virtue, virtue glory and good fortune.
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.
If she undervalue me,
What care I how fair she be?
Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay.
The world itself is but a larger prison, out of which some are daily selected for execution.
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!
Bestow therefore thy youth so, that thou mayest have comfort to remember it when it hath forsaken thee, and not sigh and grieve at the account thereof.
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.
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.
Silence in love bewrays more woe
Than words, though ne’er so witty:
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity.
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.
Cowards fear to die; but courage stout,
Rather than live in snuff, will be put out.
Shall I, like an hermit, dwell
On a rock or in a cell?
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.
No man is wise or safe, but he that is honest.
Whoso taketh in hand to govern a multitude, either by way of liberty or principality, and cannot assure himself of those persons that are enemies to that enterprise, doth frame a state of short perseverance.