Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke Quotes

“Oh wearisome Condition of Humanity!
Born under one law, to another bound:
Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound:
What meaneth Nature by these diverse laws?
Passion and reason, self-division cause.
Is it the mark, or Majesty of Power
To make offences that it may forgive?”

“Love is no true-made looking-glass
Which perfect yields the shape we bring;
It ugly shows us all that was,
And flatters every future thing.”

“Who worships Cupid doth adore a boy;
Boys' earnest are at first in their delight,
But for a new soon leave their dearest toy,
And out of mind as soon as out of sight;
Their joys be dallyings and their wealth is play,
They cry to have and cry to cast away.”

“If Nature did not take delight in blood,
She would have made more easy ways to good.
We that are bound by vows and by promotion,
With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites,
To teach belief in good and still devotion,
To preach of heaven's wonders and delights —
Yet, when each of us in his own heart looks,
He finds the God there far unlike his books.”

“Now rime, the son of rage, which art no kin to skill,
And endless grief, which deads my life, yet knows not how to kill,
Go seek that hapless tomb, which if ye hap to find,
Salute the stones that keep the bones that held so good a mind.”

“Three things there be in man's opinion dear,
Fame, many friends, and fortune's dignities:
False visions all, which in our sense appear,
To sanctify desire's idolatry.”

“Hard-hearted minds relent and rigor's tears abound,
And envy strangely rues his end, in whom no fault was found.
Knowledge her light hath lost, valor hath slain her knight,
Sidney is dead, dead is my friend, dead is the world's delight.”

“Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter; is he not also the only one that deserves to be laughed at?”