“I have done one braver thing
Than all the Worthies did;
And yet a braver thence doth spring,
Which is to keep that hid.”

—  John Donne

The Undertaking, stanza 1

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 "I have done one braver thing Than all the Worthies did; And yet a braver thence doth spring, Which is to keep that h…" by John Donne?
John Donne photo
John Donne 115
English poet 1572–1631

Related quotes

Charlie Huston photo

“One day, when I am a braver man, I will tell her these things, and then I will look her in the eye tell her I love her and ask her to be only mine. But until that day, we're just friends.”

Charlie Huston Already Dead

Joe Pitt Casebooks
Source: Already Dead, Character: Joe Pitt (narration)

L. Frank Baum photo

“"You will be very welcome," answered Dorothy, "for you will help to keep away the other wild beasts. It seems to me they must be more cowardly than you are if they allow you to scare them so easily."
"They really are," said the Lion, "but that doesn't make me any braver, and as long as I know myself to be a coward I shall be unhappy."”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

Giacomo Casanova photo

“If you have not done things worthy of being written about, at least write things worthy of being read.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice
Plato photo

“Meno: I feel, somehow, that I like what you are saying.
Socrates: And I, Meno, like what I am saying. Some things I have said of which I am not altogether confident. But that we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know; — that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.”

Plato book Meno

Meno

Francis Bacon photo

“It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism 6
Novum Organum (1620), Book I

Nicholas Sparks photo

“I hadn't done any of the things that I normally did with girls, yet somehow I'd fallen in love.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

“I paced up and down the little room, a queer thing happened. It was as though my wandering imagination came upon a new quality, different from all that I had ever known; yet one which was also more familiar and intimate than the smell of Plaxy in the mood of love, more piercing sweet than bitches, more hunt-worthy than the trail of a fox.”

Olaf Stapledon book Sirius

Sirius (1944)

E.M. Forster photo

“As for my politics, you will have guessed that I am not a Fascist — Fascism does evil that evil may come. And I am not a Communist, though perhaps I might be one if I was a younger and braver man, for in Communism I see hope. It does many things which I think evil, but I know that it intends good. I am actually what my age and my upbringing have made me — a bourgeois who adheres to the British constitution, adheres to it rather than supports it, and the fact that this isn't dignified doesn't worry me. I do care about the past. I do care about the preservation and extension of freedom.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

"Liberty In England", Speech (June 21, 1935), reprinted in Abinger Harvest (1936).

Francois Rabelais photo

“Time, which gnaws and diminisheth all things else, augments and increaseth benefits; because a noble action of liberality, done to a man of reason, doth grow continually by his generous thinking of it and remembering it.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 50 : Gargantua's speech to the vanquished.
Context: Time, which gnaws and diminisheth all things else, augments and increaseth benefits; because a noble action of liberality, done to a man of reason, doth grow continually by his generous thinking of it and remembering it.
Being unwilling therefore any way to degenerate from the hereditary mildness and clemency of my parents, I do now forgive you, deliver you from all fines and imprisonments, fully release you, set you at liberty, and every way make you as frank and free as ever you were before.

Related topics