“A little apish hat, couched fast to the pate, like an oyster;
French cambric ruffs, deep with a witness, starched to the purpose:
Delicate in speech; quaint in array; conceited in all points;
In courtly guiles, a passing singular odd man.”

— Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

Source: About, Lines attributed to Gabriel Harvey by Thomas Nashe, said to have been written to ridicule Oxford.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A little apish hat, couched fast to the pate, like an oyster; French cambric ruffs, deep with a witness, starched to t…" by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford?

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford photo

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford 7

English peer and courtier of the Elizabethan era 1550–1604

Related quotes

“Eating a raw oyster is like french kissing a mermaid.”

Tom Robbins (1932) American writer

“You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

On a Dull Writer, reported in John Hawkesworth, The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin (1754), p. 265. Alternately attributed to Alexander Pope by Bartlett's Quotations, 10th Edition (1919). Compare: "His wit invites you by his looks to come, But when you knock, it never is at home", William Cowper, Conversation, line 303
Disputed

“You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Credited as Epigram: An Empty House (1727), or On a Dull Writer; alternately attributed to Jonathan Swift in John Hawkesworth, The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin (1754), p. 265. Compare: "His wit invites you by his looks to come, But when you knock, it never is at home", William Cowper, Conversation, line 303.
Misattributed

“Is it a cosmic law, d'you think, that conceited men's hats are always too small?”

Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875–1956) British writer

7. "The Old-fashioned Apache"
Trent Intervenes (1938)

“A man of remarkable genius may afford to pass by a piece of wit, if it happens to border on abuse. A little genius is obliged to catch at every witticism indiscriminately.”

William Shenstone (1714–1763) English gardener

Essays on Men and Manners (1804)

“The geometric point is an invisible thing. Therefore, it must be defined as an incorporeal thing. Considered in terms of substance, it equals zero... Thus we look upon the geometric point as the ultimate and most singular union of silence and speech.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

The geometric point has, therefore, been given its material form, in the first instance, in writing. It belongs to language and signifies silence.
1920 - 1930, Point and line to plane, 1926

“These fellows, knowing the extravagant gullibility of the age, set their wits to work in the imagination of improbable possibilities — of odd accidents, as they term them; but to a reflecting intellect (like mine," I added, in parenthesis, putting my forefinger unconsciously to the side of my nose,) "to a contemplative understanding such as I myself possess, it seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these 'odd accidents' is by far the oddest accident of all. For my own part, I intend to believe nothing henceforward that has anything of the 'singular' about it.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

"The Angel Of The Odd: An Extravaganza".

“Deep in the man sits fast his fate
To mould his fortunes, mean or great.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Fate http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=20569&c=323
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

“Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)

“In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

"The Convergence of the Twain" (Lines on the loss of the Titanic) http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/916.html (1912), lines 1-3, from Satires of Circumstance (1914)

“A little apish hat, couched fast to the pate, like an oyster;French cambric ruffs, deep with a witness, starched to the purpose:Delicate in speech; quaint in array; conceited in all points;In courtly guiles, a passing singular odd man.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford 7

Related quotes

Related topics

“A little apish hat, couched fast to the pate, like an oyster;
French cambric ruffs, deep with a witness, starched to the purpose:
Delicate in speech; quaint in array; conceited in all points;
In courtly guiles, a passing singular odd man.”