Walter Raleigh Quotes (41 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Walter Raleigh: 41 quotes 8 likes

Famous Walter Raleigh Quotes

“There is nothing exempt from the peril of mutation.”

Walter Raleigh

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 24

“What is our life? A play of passion;
our mirth: the music of division;
our mother's wombs: the tiring houses be
where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is
that sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we playing to our latest rest,
only we die in earnest, that's no jest.”

Walter Raleigh

"On the Life of Man" (1612)
Attributed

“He that doth not as other men do, but endeavoureth that which ought to be done, shall thereby rather incur peril than preservation; for whoso laboureth to be sincerely perfect and good shall necessarily perish, living among men that are generally evil.”

Walter Raleigh

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25

“Better were it to be unborn than ill-bred.”

Walter Raleigh

Source: Instructions to his Son and to Posterity (published 1632), Chapter II

“What dependence can I have on the alleged events of ancient history, when I find such difficulty in ascertaining the truth regarding a matter that has taken place only a few minutes ago, and almost in my own presence!”

Walter Raleigh

Upon receiving discrepant accounts from the participants in a recent quarrel below his window.
Robert Chambers, Testimony: its Posture in the Scientific World http://books.google.com/books?id=pChcAAAAQAAJ& (1859) p. 12
Attributed

“Take care that thou be not made a fool by flatterers, for even the wisest men are abused by these. Know, therefore, that flatterers are the worst kind of traitors; for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing; but so shadow and paint all thy vices and follies, as thou shalt never, by their will, discern evil from good, or vice from virtue.”

Walter Raleigh

Source: Instructions to his Son and to Posterity (published 1632), Chapter III
Context: Take care that thou be not made a fool by flatterers, for even the wisest men are abused by these. Know, therefore, that flatterers are the worst kind of traitors; for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing; but so shadow and paint all thy vices and follies, as thou shalt never, by their will, discern evil from good, or vice from virtue. And, because all men are apt to flatter themselves, to entertain the additions of other men's praises is most perilous. Do not therefore praise thyself, except thou wilt be counted a vain-glorious fool; neither take delight in the praises of other men, except thou deserve it, and receive it from such as are worthy and honest, and will withal warn thee of thy faults; for flatterers have never any virtue — they are ever base, creeping, cowardly persons. A flatterer is said to be a beast that biteth smiling: it is said by Isaiah in this manner — "My people, they that praise thee, seduce thee, and disorder the paths of thy feet;" and David desired God to cut out the tongue of a flatterer.
But it is hard to know them from friends, they are so obsequious and full of protestations; for as a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend. A flatterer is compared to an ape, who, because she cannot defend the house like a dog, labour as an ox, or bear burdens as a horse, doth therefore yet play tricks and provoke laughter. Thou mayest be sure, that he that will in private tell thee thy faults is thy friend; for he adventures thy mislike, and doth hazard thy hatred; for there are few men that can endure it, every man for the most part delighting in self-praise, which is one of the most universal follies which bewitcheth mankind.

Walter Raleigh Quotes about men

“All histories do shew, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.”

Walter Raleigh

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25

“It is the nature of men, having escaped one extreme, which by force they were constrained long to endure, to run headlong into the other extreme, forgetting that virtue doth always consist in the mean.”

Walter Raleigh

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25

“Historians desiring to write the actions of men, ought to set down the simple truth, and not say anything for love or hatred; also to choose such an opportunity for writing as it may be lawful to think what they will, and write what they think, which is a rare happiness of the time.”

Walter Raleigh

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25

“All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest. Howsoever, he that for want of will or wit useth not those means, must rest in servitude and poverty.”

Walter Raleigh

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25

Walter Raleigh Quotes about the truth

“Go, Soul, the body’s guest,
Upon a thankless arrant:
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.Say to the court, it glows.
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church, it shows
What’s good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.”

Walter Raleigh

The Lie (1608)

“Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth.”

Walter Raleigh

The History of the World (1614), Preface

“If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy Love.But fading flowers in every field,
To winter floods their treasures yield;
A honey'd tongue, a heart of gall,
Is Fancy's spring, but Sorrow's fall.”

Walter Raleigh

The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd (1599), st. 1–2
Inspired by Christopher Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd to his Love

Walter Raleigh Quotes

“Be advised what thou dost discourse of, and what thou maintainest whether touching religion, state, or vanity; for if thou err in the first, thou shalt be accounted profane; if in the second, dangerous; if in the third, indiscreet and foolish.”

Walter Raleigh

Source: Instructions to his Son and to Posterity (published 1632), Chapter IV

Religion

“Bestow therefore thy youth so, that thou mayest have comfort to remember it when it hath forsaken thee, and not sigh and grieve at the account thereof.”

Walter Raleigh

Source: Instructions to his Son and to Posterity (published 1632), Chapter II

Youth

“Our passions are most like to floods and streams;
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.”

Walter Raleigh

Sir Walter Raleigh to the Queen (published 1655); alternately reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) as:
"Passions are likened best to floods and streams:
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb"
and titled The Silent Lover. Compare: "Altissima quæque flumina minimo sono labi", (translated: "The deepest rivers flow with the least sound"), Q. Curtius, vii. 4. 13. "Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep", William Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI. act iii. sc. i.

Passion

“No man is esteemed for gay garments but by fools and women.”

Walter Raleigh

Source: Instructions to his Son and to Posterity (published 1632), Chapter VII

Women , Fools

“Why dost thou not strike? Strike, man!”

Walter Raleigh

To his executioner, as reported in Curiosities of Literature (1835) by Isaac Disraeli, p. 302
Attributed

“Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.”

Walter Raleigh

Poem written in a glass window obvious to the Queen's eye, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). "Her Majesty, either espying or being shown it, did under-write, 'If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all'", Thomas Fuller, Worthies of England, vol. i. p. 419.

Fear

“[History] hath triumphed over time, which besides it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over.”

Walter Raleigh

The History of the World (1614), Preface

History , Time

“O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet”

Walter Raleigh

Here lies
The History of the World Book V, chapter 6

Death , World

“Shall I, like an hermit, dwell
On a rock or in a cell?”

Walter Raleigh

Poem reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Fain would I, but I dare not; I dare, and yet I may not;
I may, although I care not, for pleasure when I play not.”

Walter Raleigh

Fain Would I, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Pleasure

“So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing —
Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing —
Stab at thee he that will,
No stab the soul can kill.”

Walter Raleigh

The Lie (1608).

Lie , Soul

“If she undervalue me,
What care I how fair she be?”

Walter Raleigh

Poem reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "If she be not so to me, / What care I how fair she be?", George Wither, The Shepherd's Resolution.

“No man is wise or safe, but he that is honest.”

Walter Raleigh

Advice to the Earl of Rutland on his Travels (1596)

“Whoso taketh in hand to govern a multitude, either by way of liberty or principality, and cannot assure himself of those persons that are enemies to that enterprise, doth frame a state of short perseverance.”

Walter Raleigh

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25

Way , Personality , Perseverance

“The world itself is but a larger prison, out of which some are daily selected for execution.”

Walter Raleigh

Supposed to have been said by Raleigh to his friends as he was being taken to prison, on the day before his execution (William Stebbing Sir Walter Raleigh (1891), chapter 30)
Attributed

World

“Every fool knoweth that hatreds are the cinders of affection.”

Walter Raleigh

Letter to Sir Robert Cecil (10 May 1593)

Fools

“Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay.”

Walter Raleigh

Verses to Edmund Spenser, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919); Comparable to: "Methought I saw my late espoused saint", John Milton, Sonnet xxiii, and "Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne", William Wordsworth, Sonnet.

“Whoso desireth to govern well and securely, it behoveth him to have a vigilant eye to the proceedings of great princes, and to consider seriously of their designs.”

Walter Raleigh

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25

“Fame's but a hollow echo; gold, pure clay;
Honour, the darling but of one short day,
Beauty—th' eye's idol—but a damasked skin;
State, but a golden prison to live in
And torture free-born minds.”

Walter Raleigh

"A Farewell to the Vanities of the World" http://www.bartleby.com/331/467.html, lines 3–7. Author uncertain. Attributed to Henry Wotton and to Raleigh.
Attributed

Beauty

“Speaking much also is a sign of vanity; for he that is lavish in words is a niggard in deeds.”

Walter Raleigh

Source: Instructions to his Son and to Posterity (published 1632), Chapter IV

“For whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.”

Walter Raleigh

A Discourse of the Invention of Ships, Anchors, Compass, &c

World , Sea

“Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!”

Walter Raleigh

His Own Epitaph, written the night before his execution (1618) and found in his Bible in the Gate-house at Westminster; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tnk8RpOFWw "Even Such is Time" — Choir of Salisbury Cathedral

God , Youth , Age , Way

“So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lies.”

Walter Raleigh

Stebbing's Sir Walter Raleigh, chapter 30, gives these as Raleigh's words on being asked by the executioner which way he wanted to lay his head on the block.
Attributed

Way , Heart

“Remember…that if thou marry for beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which perchance will never last nor please thee one year; and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all, for the desire dieth when it is attained, and the affection perisheth when it is satisfied.”

Walter Raleigh

Source: Instructions to his Son and to Posterity (published 1632), Chapter II

Life , Beauty

“Cowards fear to die; but courage stout,
Rather than live in snuff, will be put out.”

Walter Raleigh

On the snuff of a candle the night before he died; Raleigh's Remains, p. 258, ed. 1661

Fear , Courage

“Silence in love bewrays more woe
Than words, though ne’er so witty:
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity.”

Walter Raleigh

The Silent Lover, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)