“O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away”
Source: Poems Chiefly from Manuscript
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John Clare21
English poet 1793–1864Related quotes
George Peele (1556–1596) English translator and poet
Polyhymnia (1590), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“O pitiable minds of men, O blind intelligences! In what gloom of life, in how great perils is passed all your poor span of time! not to see that all nature barks for is this, that pain be removed away out of the body, and that the mind, kept away from care and fear, enjoy a feeling of delight!”
O miseras hominum mentes, o pectora caeca!
qualibus in tenebris vitae quantisque periclis
degitur hoc aevi quod cumquest! nonne videre
nihil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi ut qui
corpore seiunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur
iucundo sensu cura semota metuque?
Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher
Book II, lines 14–19 (tr. Rouse)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States
Variant: You can quicker get back a million dollars that was stolen than a word that you gave away.
Source: A View from the Bridge: A Play in Two Acts
Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith
Epistle to Muhammad Sháh
“O fol of alle foles,
Thou farst as he betwen tuo stoles
That wolde sitte and goth to grounde.”
Bk. 4, line 625.
Confessio Amantis
“305. He is not poore that hath little, but he that desireth much.”
George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest
Jacula Prudentum (1651)