A

DICTION A R Y

OF

QUOTATIONS.

A.

ABSENCE.

What! keep a week away? seven days and nights ?
Eight score eight hours ? and lovers' absent hours,
More tedious than the dial eight score times ?
weary reckoning!

O thou that dost inhabit in my breast,
Leave not the mansion so long tenantless ;
Lest, growing ruinous, the building fall,
And leave no memory of what it was !
Repair me with thy presence, Silvia;
Thou gentle nymph, cherish thy forlorn swain!

ACTIVITY.

Celerity is never more admir'd

Than by the negligent. If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly.

Wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss, But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.

B

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope ; only, doth backward pull
Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.

Take the instant way;
For honour travels in a strait so narrow,
Where one but

goes abreast : keep then the path : For emulation hath a thousand sons, That one by one pursue; If you give way, Or edge aside from the direct forthright, Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by, And leave

you

hindmost. Let's take the instant by the forward top; For we are old, and on our quick’st decrees The inaudible and noiseless foot of time Steals, ere we can effect them, Come,-1 have learn'd, that fearful commenting Is leaden servitor to dull delay; Delay leads impotent and snail-pac'd beggary : Then fiery expedition be my wing, Jove's Mercury, and herald for a king! Go, muster men: My counsel is my shield; We must be brief, when traitors brave the field. Time, thou anticipat'st my dread exploits : The flighty purpose never is o’ertook, Unless the deed go with it: From this moment, The very firstlings of my

heart shall be The firstlings of my hand. And even now To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought

and done.

ADVERSITY.

Sweet are the uses of adversity ;
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head :
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
The soul and body rive not more in parting,
Than greatness going off.
'Tis certain, Greatness, once fallen out with fortune,
Must fall out with men too : what the declin’d is,
He shall as soon read in the eyes of others,
As feel in his own fall : for men, like butterflies,
Show not their mealy wings, but to the summer.

As we do turn our backs
From our companion, thrown into his grave;
So his familiars to his buried fortunes
Slink all away ; leave their false vows with him,
Like empty purses pick’d: and this poor

self,
A dedicated beggar to the air,
With his disease of all-shunn'd poverty,
Walks, like contempt, alone.
Where you are liberal of your

loves and counsels, Be sure you be not loose; for those

you

make friends, And give your hearts to, when they once perceive The least rub in your fortunes, fall away Like water from ye, never found again But where they mean to sink ye.

Then was I as a tree, Whose boughs did bend with fruit: but, in one night, A storm, or robbery, call it what you will, Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves, And left me bare to weather.

Such a house broke!
So noble a master fallen ! all gone! and not
One friend, to take his fortune by the arm,
And go along with him

Come hither, pray you. How

goes the world, that I am thus encounter'd, With clamorous demands of date-broken bonds, And the detention of long-since-due debts, Against my honour?

But myself,
Who had the world as my confectionary ;
The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, and hearts of men
At duty, more than I could frame employment;
That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves
Do on the oak, have with one winter's brush
Fell from their boughs, and left me open, bare
From every storm that blows;—I to bear this,
That never knew but better, is some burden.
They answer, in a joint and corporate voice,
That now they are at fall, want treasure, cannot
Do what they would; are sorry—you are honourable,
But yet they could have wish'd—they knew not-
Something hath been amiss-a noble nature
May catch a wrench-would all were all well—'tis

pity-
And so, intending other serious matters,
After distasteful looks, and these hard fractions,
With certain half-caps, and cold-moving nods,
They froze me into silence.
This is in thee a nature but affected;
A poor unmanly melancholy; sprung
From change of fortune.

What, think'st
That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,
Will put thy shirt on warm? Will these moist trees,
That have outliv'd the eagle, page thy heels,
And skip when thou point'st out ? will the cold brook,
Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste,
To cure thy o'er-night's surfeit? Call the creatures,
Whose naked natures live in all the spight

Of wreakful heaven ; whose bare unhoused trunks,
To the conflicting elements expos'd,
Answer mere nature,-bid them flatter thee.
Sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens;
'Tis just the fashion, Wherefore do you look
Upon that poor and broken baukrupt there?
Yet better thus, and known to be contemn'd,
Than still contemn'd and flatter'd. To be worst,
The lowest, and most dejected thing of fortune,
Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear :
The lamentable change is from the best;
The worst returns to laughter.

Nay then, farewell!
I have touch'd the highest point of all my greatness ;
And, from that full meridian of my glory,
1 haste now to my setting : I shall fall
Like a bright exhalation in the evening,
And no man see me more,

O father abbot, broken with the storms of state, Is come to lay his weary bones among ye ; Give him a little earth for charity. His overthrow heap'd happiness upon him ; For then, and not till then, he felt himself, And found the blessedness of being little: And, to add greater honours to his age Than man could give him, he died, fearing God. Where is thy husband now? where be thy brothers ? Where be thy two sons wherein dost thou joy? Who sues, and knees, and says—God save the queen ? Where be the bending peers that flatter'd thee ? Where be the thronging troops that follow'd thee ? Decline all this, and see what now thou art.

An old man,