| C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917. | | | | Denham |
| | | | Be just in all thy actions, and if join’d |
| With those that are not, never change thy mind. |
| 1 |
| | Expect not more from servants than is just; |
| Reward them well, if they observe their trust, |
| Nor with them cruelty or pride invade; |
| Since God and nature them our brothers made. |
| 2 |
| | I can no more believe old Homer blind, |
| Than those who say the sun hath never shin’d; |
| The age therein he liv’d was dark, but he |
| Could not want sight who taught the world to see. |
| 3 |
| | In age to wish for youth is full as vain |
| As for a youth to turn a child again. |
| 4 |
| | Not from gray hairs authority doth flow, |
| Nor from bald heads, nor from a wrinkled brow; |
| But our past life, when virtuously spent, |
| Must to our age those happy fruits present. |
| 5 |
| | O happiness of sweet retir’d content! |
| To be at once secure and innocent. |
| 6 |
| | O, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream |
| My great example, as it is my theme! |
| Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull; |
| Strong without rage, without o’erflowing full. |
| 7 |
| | O, happiness of blindness! now no beauty |
| Inflames my lust; no other’s goods my envy, |
| Or misery my pity; no man’s wealth |
| Draws my respect; nor poverty my scorn, |
| Yet still I see enough! man to himself |
| Is a large prospect, raised above the level |
| Of his low creeping thoughts; if then I have |
| A world within myself, that would shall be |
| My empire; there I’ll reign, commanding freely, |
| And willingly obey’d, secure from fear |
| Of foreign forces, or domestic treasons. |
| 8 |
| | ’T is in worldly accidents, |
| As in the world itself, where things most distant |
| Meet one another: Thus the east and west, |
| Upon the globe a mathematical point |
| Only divides: Thus happiness and misery, |
| And all extremes, are still contiguous. |
| 9 |
| | When any great design thou dost intend, |
| Think on the means, the manner, and the end. |
| 10 |
| Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals. | 11 |
| Poesy is of so subtle a spirit that in the pouring out of one language into another it will evaporate. | 12 |
| Such was the force of his eloquence, to make the hearers more concerned than he that spake. | 13 | | |
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