1580s

Proverbs (Heywood) · 1580

★ 5.4

Looke ere ye leape.

Proverbs (Heywood) · 1580

★ 5.4

Haste maketh waste.

When the Sunne shineth make hay.

Proverbs (Heywood) · 1580

★ 5.4

Proverbs (Heywood) · 1580

★ 5.4

Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgement on him.

Essays · 1580

★ 5.4

It happens as with the cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

And while I at length debate and beate the bush, There shall steppe in other men and catche the burdes.

Essays · 1580

★ 5.4

Proverbs (Heywood) · 1580

★ 5.3

For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.

Essays · 1580

★ 5.3

Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.

Essays · 1580

★ 4.6

The easy, gentle and sloping path…is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

Essays · 1580

★ 4.5

Everyone calls barbarism what is not customary to him.

Essays · 1580

★ 3.8

I want death to find me planting my cabbages.

Essays · 1580

★ 3.8

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to be oneself.

Essays · 1580

★ 3.8

Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition.

Essays · 1580

★ 3.8

Virtue shuns ease as a companion... It demands a rough and thorny path.

Many hands make light warke.

Essays · 1580

★ 3.8

Three may keepe counsayle, if two be away.

Proverbs (Heywood) · 1580

★ 3.7

You cannot see the wood for trees.

Proverbs (Heywood) · 1580

★ 3.7

Beggars should be no choosers.

Proverbs (Heywood) · 1580

★ 3.7

Proverbs (Heywood) · 1580

★ 3.7

When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?

Essays · 1580

★ 3.7

There were never in the world two opinions alike, any more than two hairs or two grains. Their most universal quality is diversity.

Essays · 1580

★ 3.7

If I am pressed to say why I loved him, I feel it can only be explained by replying: "Because it was he; because it was me."

Essays · 1580

★ 3.7

Man, a subject which is marvelously vain, diverse, and like the waves of the sea.

Essays · 1580

★ 3.7

It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.

Essays · 1580

★ 3.7

Not because Socrates said so, but because it is in truth my own disposition-and perchance to some excess-I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Pole as a Frenchman, making less account of the national than of the universal and common bond.

Essays · 1580

★ 3.6

Bees ransack flowers here and there, but then they make honey, which is entirely theirs: it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Similarly a boy will transform and mix his borrowings.

Essays · 1580

★ 3.6

There is no man, good as he may be, who, if all his thoughts and actions were submitted to the scrutiny of the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

But true Love is a durable fire, In the mind ever burning; Never sick, never old, never dead, From itself never turning.

Essays · 1580

★ 3.6

Poem

Sir Walter Raleigh

1580

★ 3.6

Philosophical literature

He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns, not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds.

Giordano Bruno

1584

★ 3.6

Historical literature

There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.

Francis Drake

1587

★ 3.6

He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.

Essays · 1580

★ 2.9

It is more of a job to interpret the interpretations than to interpret the things, and there are more books about books than about any other subject: we do nothing but write glosses about each other.

Essays · 1580

★ 2.8

Whenever your life ends, it is all there. The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.

Essays · 1580

★ 2.8

One should always have one's boots on, and be ready to leave.

Essays · 1580

★ 2.1

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.

Essays · 1580

★ 2.1

Living is my job and my art.

Essays · 1580

★ 2.1

Those who have likened our life to a dream were more right, by chance, than they realized. We are awake while sleeping, and waking sleep.

Essays · 1580

★ 2.0

The diversity of human events offers us infinite examples in all sorts of forms.

Essays · 1580

★ 2.0

The value of life lies not in the length of days but in the use you make of them.

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king.

Essays · 1580

★ 2.0

Speech

Elizabeth I

1588

★ 2.0

The worth and value of a man is in his heart and his will; there lies his real honour. Valour is the strength, not of legs and arms, but of heart and soul.

Essays · 1580

★ 1.9

A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude.

There is no land unhabitable nor sea innavigable.

Essays · 1580

★ 1.9

Letter

Robert Thorne

1589

★ 1.9

The loss of wealth is loss of dirt, As sages in all times assert; The happy man's without a shirt.

Be Merry Friends · 1580

★ 1.9

Saying is one thing and doing is another.