“Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman’s fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care,
’Cause another’s rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flowery meads in May,
If she be not so to me,
What care I how fair she be?”

— George Wither

The Shepherd's Resolution; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "If she undervalue me, What care I how fair she be?", Sir Walter Raleigh, Poem.

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George Wither 7

English poet 1588–1667

Related quotes

“Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care
'Cause another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flow'ry meads in May,
If she think not well of me,
What care I how fair she be?”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

George Wither, "The Lover's Resolution" http://www.bartleby.com/101/237.html.
Misattributed

“If she undervalue me,
What care I how fair she be?”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

Poem reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "If she be not so to me, / What care I how fair she be?", George Wither, The Shepherd's Resolution.

“Exceeding fair she was not; and yet fair
In that she never studied to be fairer
Than Nature made her; beauty cost her nothing,
Her virtues were so rare.”

George Chapman All Fools

Act I, scene i.
All Fools (1605)

“Ah, were she pitiful as she is fair,
Or but as mild as she is seeming so,
Then were my hopes greater than my despair,
Then all the world were heaven, nothing woe.”

Robert Greene (dramatist) book Pandosto

Pandosto (1588); Dyce p. 294.

“She didn’t care. Not caring was how she got through the day.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Leviathan Wakes (2011), Chapter 16 (p. 170)

“Go, lovely rose!
Tell her that wastes her time and me
That now she knows,
When I resemble her to thee,
How sweet and fair she seems to be.”

Edmund Waller (1606–1687) English poet and politician

Go, Lovely Rose (1664), st. 1.
Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham (1857)

“I loved a lass, a fair one,
As fair as e'er was seen;
She was indeed a rare one,
Another Sheba queen:
But, fool as then I was,
I thought she loved me too:
But now, alas! she's left me,
Falero, lero, loo!”

George Wither (1588–1667) English poet

I Loved a Lass; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 390.

“I know a maiden fair to see,
Take care!
She can both false and friendly be,
Beware! Beware!
Trust her not,
She is fooling thee.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

From the German (In Hyperion).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“I can't tell if she's actually real, or if she's stopped caring if she's real or not. Or is not caring what makes a person real?”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

“I don't think she realized how much she cared for him, or he for her, until the end. Hasn't someone said a woman may be known by the men who love her enough to die for her? (If they haven't, I claim the credit myself.)”

Elizabeth Peters The Ape Who Guards the Balance

Source: The Ape Who Guards the Balance

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