Edmund Spenser: Trending quotes

“The noblest mind the best contentment has.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 1, stanza 35
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

“As withered weed through cruell winters tine,
That feeles the warmth of sunny beames reflection,
Liftes up his head, that did before decline
And gins to spread his leafe before the faire sunshine.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 12, stanza 34
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book IV

Feeling , Winter

“And all for love, and nothing for reward.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 8, stanza 2
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book II

Love

“For whatsoever from one place doth fall,
Is with the tide unto an other brought:
For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Source: The Faerie Queene

“For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Source: The Faerie Queene

“Ah! when will this long weary day have end,
And lende me leave to come unto my love?

- Epithalamion”

Edmund Spenser

Source: Amoretti and Epithalamion

Love

“There is nothing lost, but may be found, if sought.

(No hay nada perdido, que no pueda encontrarse, si se lo busca)”

Edmund Spenser

Source: The Faerie Queene, Book Five

“I hate the day, because it lendeth light
To see all things, but not my love to see.”

Edmund Spenser

Daphnaida, v. 407; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love , Hate , Light

“How oft do they their silver bowers leave
To come to succour us that succour want!”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 8, stanza 2
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book II

“The rolling wheel, that runneth often round,
The hardest steel in tract of time doth tear;
And drizzling drops, that often do redound,
The firmest flint doth in continuance wear:
Yet cannot I, with many a dropping tear,
And long entreaty, soften her hard heart,
That she will once vouchsafe my plaint to hear,
Or look with pity on my painful smart:
But when I plead, she bids me play my part;
And when I weep, she says, "Tears are but water";
And when I sigh, she says, "I know the art";
And when I wail, she turns herself to laughter;
So do I weep and wail, and plead in vain,
Whiles she as steel and flint doth still remain.”

Edmund Spenser Amoretti

Amoretti (1595), Sonnet XVIII https://www.bartleby.com/358/784.html

Pain , Art , Tear , Laughter

“Sweete Themmes runne softly, till I end my Song.”

Edmund Spenser

The last line of each stanza
This is often attributed to T. S. Eliot, who does indeed quote it in The Waste Land
Prothalamion (1596)

“Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 12, stanza 70
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book II

“Ay me, how many perils doe enfold
The righteous man, to make him daily fall!”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 8, stanza 1
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

“And in his hand a sickle he did holde,
To reape the ripened fruits the which the earth had yold.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 7, stanza 30
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book VII

“But of his cheere did seeme too solemne sad;
Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 1, stanza 2
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

Sadness

“Me seemes the world is runne quite out of square,
From the first point of his appointed sourse,
And being once amisse growes daily wourse and wourse.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Introduction, stanza 1
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book V

World

“As when in Cymbrian plaine
An heard of bulles, whom kindly rage doth sting,
Doe for the milky mothers want complaine,
And fill the fieldes with troublous bellowing.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 8, stanza 11
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

Rage

“I trow that countenance cannot lie,
Whose thoughts are legible in the eie.”

Edmund Spenser

An Elegie, or Friends Passion, for his Astrophill (1586), line 108

Lie

“Behold, whiles she before the altar stands,
Hearing the holy priest that to her speakes,
And blesseth her with his two happy hands.”

Edmund Spenser

Epithalamion, line 223; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Happiness

“And as she lookt about, she did behold,
How over that same dore was likewise writ,
Be bold, be bold, and every where Be bold,
That much she muz'd, yet could not construe it
By any ridling skill, or commune wit.
At last she spyde at that same roomes upper end,
Another yron dore, on which was writ,
Be not too bold.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 11, stanza 54
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book III

Communication