Edmund Waller, 1606 - 1687

And keeps the palace of the soul.

Edmund Waller, Of Tea.

Edmund Waller, 1606 - 1687

Poets that lasting marble seek
Must come in Latin or Greek.

Edmund Waller, Of English Verse [1668]

Sir Kenelm Digby, 1603 - 1661

The hot water is to remain upon it [the tea] no longer than whiles you can say the Miserere Psalm very leisurely.

Sir Kenelm Digby, The Closer Opened. Tea with Eggs.

Oliver Cromwell, 1599 - 1658

Mr. Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it.



Oliver Cromwell, From HORACE WALPOLE, Anecdotes of Painting in England [1762 - 1771]

Rene Descartes, 1596 - 1650

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.

Rene Descartes, Le Discours de la Methode [1637], I

George Herbert, 1593 - 1633

Thursday come, the week is gone.

George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum [1651]. no. 587

Robert Burton, 1577 - 1640

Why doth one man's yawning make another yawn?

Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy [1621 - 1651]. pt. I, sec. 2, member 3, subsec. 2

John Donne, 1572 - 1631

She, and comparisons are odious.

John Donne, Elegies, no. 8, The Comparison, l. 54

William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616

See! how she leans her cheek upon her hand:
O! that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek.

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, II, ii, 23

William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616

A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

William Shakespeare, Richard III, V, iv, 7

Francis Bacon, 1561 - 1626

Knowledge is power [Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est].

Francis Bacon, Meditationes Sacrae [1597]. De Haeresibus

John Lyly, c.1554 - 1606

Delays breed dangers.

John Lyly, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit [1579]. Arber's reprint, p. 65

Henri IV [Henry of Navarre], 1553 - 1610

I want there to be no peasant in my realm so poor that he will not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.

Henri IV, Attributed.

Elizabeth I, 1533 - 1603

I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any other prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.

Elizabeth I, Speech to the troops at Tilbury on the approach of the Armada [1588]

Henri Estienne, c. 1531 - 1598

Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait
[If youth but knew, if old age but could]

Henri Estienne, Les Premices [1594]

Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469 - 1527

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince [1532], ch. 26

William Dunbar, c.1465 - c.1530

London, thou art the flower of Cities all.

William Dunbar, London, refrain.

Francois Villon, 1431 - c.1465

But where are the snows of yesteryear?

Francois Villon, Le Grand Testament, Ballades des Dames du Temps Jadis.

Francois Villon, 1431 - c. 1465

Ah God! Had I but studied
In the days of my foolish youth.

Francois Villon, Le Grand Testament, 26.

Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1343 - 1400

To rede, and drive the night away.

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Book of the Duchess [1369], l.49

Yoshida Kenko, 1283 - 1350

To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations - such is a pleasure beyond compare.

Yoshida Kenko, Tsurezure-Gusa (Essays in Idleness) [c. 1340]

Dante Alighieri, 1265 - 1321

O conscience, upright and stainless, how bitter a sting to thee is a little fault!

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy [c.1310 - 1320]. Purgatorio, canto III, l, 8.

Dante Alighieri, 1265 - 1321

He listens well who takes notes.

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy [c.1310-1320]. Inferno, canto XV, l. 99

St. Thomas Aquinas, c. 1225 - 1274

Reason in man is rather like God in the world.

St. Thomas Aquinas, Opuscule 11, De Regno.

Fujiwara no Teika, 1162 - 1241

In the expression of the emotions originality merits the first consideration....The words
used, however, should be old ones.

Fujiwara no Teika, Guide to the Composition of Poetry.

Averroes, 1126 - 1198

Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.

Averroes, Destructio Destructonium

Gratian [Franciscus Gratianus], Twelfth century

Paintings are the Bible of the laity.

Gratian, Decretum, pt. III

Peter Abelard, 1079 - 1142

Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease.

Letter 8, Abelard to Heloise.

Galen, 129 - 199

The chief merit of language is clearness, and we know that nothing distracts us so much from this as do unfamiliar terms.

Galen, On the Natural Faculties, bk. I, sec. 2

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 121 - 180

In the morning, when you are sluggish about getting up, let this thought be present: "I am rising to a man's work."

(Seems this was a problem as early as ~100 A.D.!)

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations, V, I