| C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917. | | | | Sir Thomas Overbury |
| | | | And all the carnal beauty of my wife |
| Is but skin-deep. |
| 1 |
| | Books are a part of man’s prerogative |
| In formal ink, they thought and voices hold, |
| That we to them our solitude may give, |
| And make time present travel that of old, |
| Our life fame pieceth longer at the end, |
| And books it farther backward doth extend. |
| 2 |
| | Give me, next good, an understanding wife, |
| By nature wise, not learned by much art; |
| Some knowledge on her side will all my life |
| More scope of conversation then impart; |
| Besides her inborn virtue fortify; |
| They are most good who best know why. |
| 3 |
| | In part to blame is she, |
| Which hath without consent bin only tride; |
| He comes too neere, that comes to be denide. |
| 4 |
| | Nay, but weigh well what you presume to swear, |
| Oaths are of dreadful weight! and, if they are false, |
| Draw down damnation. |
| 5 |
| A flatterer is the shadow of a fool. | 6 |
| The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like a potato,—the only good belonging to him is underground. | 7 |
| Wit is brushwood, judgment timber; the one gives the greatest flame, the other yields the durablest heat; and both meeting make the best fire. | 8 | | |
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