The Advancement of Learning (1605)
Context: The use of this feigned history hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is, agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things. Therefore, because the acts or events of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical: because true history propoundeth the successes and issues of actions not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed providence: because true history representeth actions and events more ordinary, and less interchanged, therefore poesy endueth them with more rareness, and more unexpected and alternative variations: so as it appeareth that poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity, morality, and to delectation. And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the mind; whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind into the nature of things.
Book II, iv, 2
Pits v. James (1614), Lord Hobart's Rep. 124-125
“Nature, they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote.”
St. 5.
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1169/ (July 21, 1865)
“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”
Of Beauty
Essays (1625)
Source: Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 (1972), p. 266
Dr. Wallis's Account of some Passages of his own Life (1696)
Context: It hath been my Lot to live in a time, wherein have been many and great Changes and Alterations. It hath been my endeavour all along, to act by moderate Principles, between the Extremities on either hand, in a moderate compliance with the Powers in being, in those places, where it hath been my Lot to live, without the fierce and violent animosities usual in such Cases, against all, that did not act just as I did, knowing that there were many worthy Persons engaged on either side. And willing whatever side was upmost, to promote (as I was able) any good design for the true Interest of Religion, of Learning, and the publick good; and ready so to do good Offices, as there was Opportunity; And, if things could not be just, as I could wish, to make the best of what is: And hereby, (thro' God's gracious Providence) have been able to live easy, and useful, though not Great.<!--p. clxix
Address to the Canadian Parliament (17 May 1961)
1961
Music and Moonlight (1874), Ode
Oliver Cromwell, letter to Walter Dundas, 12 September 1650; this is also a recent misattribution.
Misattributed
I, 4
Moralia, Of Eating of Flesh
Context: For the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy. And then we fancy that the voices it utters and screams forth to us are nothing else but certain inarticulate sounds and noises, and not the several deprecations, entreaties, and pleadings of each of them.
