“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.

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Walter Raleigh 41
English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, a… 1554–1618

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