Francis Quarles Quotes

Francis Quarles was an English poet most notable for his emblem book entitled Emblems.

✵ 8. May 1592 – 8. September 1644
Francis Quarles photo
Francis Quarles: 23   quotes 2   likes

Famous Francis Quarles Quotes

“Be wisely worldly, be not worldly wise.”

Book II, no. 2.
Emblems (1635)

“It is the lot of man but once to die.”

Book V, no. 7.
Emblems (1635)

“The next way home's the farthest way about.”

Book IV, no. 2, Epigram 2. Compare: "The longest way round is the shortest way home", Bohn, Foreign Proverbs (Italian).
Emblems (1635)

Francis Quarles Quotes about life

“Even such is man, whose glory lends
His life a blaze or two, and ends.”

Hos ego versiculos (1629).

“Thou art my life, my way, my light”

Why dost thou Shade thy Lovely Face? (1635).

Francis Quarles Quotes

“The road to resolution lies by doubt:
The next way home's the farthest way about.”

Book IV, no. 2, Epigram.
Emblems (1635)

“Death aims with fouler spite
At fairer marks.”

Divine Poems (ed. 1669). Compare: "Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow", Edward Young, Night Thoughts, night v. line 1011.

“The slender debt to Nature's quickly paid,
Discharged, perchance, with greater ease than made.”

Book II, no. 13. Compare: "To die is a debt we must all of us discharge", Euripides, Alcestis, line 418.
Emblems (1635)

“The world's an Inn; and I her guest.”

On the World.

“No man is born unto himself alone;
Who lives unto himself, he lives to none.”

Esther (1621), Sec. 1, Meditation 1.

“In having all things, and not Thee, what have I?
Not having Thee, what have my labors got?
Let me enjoy but Thee, what farther crave I?
And having Thee alone, what have I not?”

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 609.

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