Top 151 Quotes & Sayings by Edmund Spenser

What more felicity can fall to creature, than to enjoy delight with liberty?

And he that strives to touch the stars, Oft stumbles at a straw.

I was promised on a time - to have reason for my rhyme; From that time unto this season, I received nor rhyme nor reason.

He that strives to touch the starts, oft stumbles at a straw.

And all for love, and nothing for reward.

The poets' scrolls will outlive the monuments of stone. Genius survives; all else is claimed by death.

Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.

It is the mind that maketh good of ill, that maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.

Her angel's face, As the great eye of heaven shined bright, And made a sunshine in the shady place.

Each goodly thing is hardest to begin.

Gold all is not that doth golden seem.

Full little knowest thou that hast not tried, What hell it is in suing long to bide: To loose good dayes, that might be better spent; To waste long nights in pensive discontent; To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow; To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow.

In vain he seeketh others to suppress, Who hath not learn'd himself first to subdue.

For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.

All love is sweet Given or returned And its familiar voice wearies not ever.

The gentle mind by gentle deeds is known, For a man by nothing is so well betrayed As by his manners.

All for love, and nothing for reward.

My Love is like to ice, and I to fire: How comes it then that this her cold so great Is not dissolved through my so hot desire, But harder grows the more I her entreat?

For whatsoever from one place doth fall, Is with the tide unto an other brought: For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.

All that in this world is great or gay, Doth, as a vapor, vanish and decay.

Those that were up themselves, kept others low; Those that were low themselves, held others hard; He suffered them to ryse or greater grow; But every one did strive his fellow down to throw.

For deeds to die, however nobly done, And thoughts of men to as themselves decay, But wise words taught in numbers for to run, Recorded by the Muses, live for ay.

Beauty is not, as fond men misdeem, an outward show of things that only seem.

Make haste therefore, sweet love, whilst it is prime, For none can call again the passed time.

Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small.

And he that strives to touch the stars Oft stumbles at a straw.

Who will not mercy unto others show, How can he mercy ever hope to have?

For we by conquest, of our soveraine might,And by eternall doome of Fate's decree,Have wonne the Empire of the Heavens bright.

So let us love, dear Love, like as we ought; Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

A circle cannot fill a triangle, so neither can the whole world, if it were to be compassed, the heart of man; a man may as easily fill a chest with grace as the heart with gold. The air fills not the body, neither doth money the covetous mind of man.

I was promised on a time To have reason for my rhyme; From that time unto this season, I received nor rhyme nor reason.

Be bold, and everywhere be bold.

Thankfulness is the tune of angels.

Nothing under heaven so strongly doth allure the sense of man, and all his mind possess, as beauty's love.

How many great ones may remember'd be, Which in their days most famously did flourish, Of whom no word we hear, nor sign now see, But as things wip'd out with a sponge do perish, Because the living cared not to cherish No gentle wits, through pride or covetize, Which might their names forever memorize!

Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a brere; Sweet is the juniper, but sharp his bough; Sweet is the eglantine, but stiketh nere; Sweet is the firbloome, but its braunches rough; Sweet is the cypress, but its rynd is tough; Sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill; Sweet is the broome-flowre, but yet sowre enough; And sweet is moly, but his root is ill.

One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washèd it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide and made my pains his prey. Vain man (said she) that dost in vain assay A mortal thing so to immortalise; For I myself shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wipèd out likewise. Not so (quod I); let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame; My verse your virtues rare shall eternise, And in the heavens write your glorious name: Where, when as Death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Sluggish idleness--the nurse of sin.

The noblest mind the best contentment has

Why then should witless man so much misweene That nothing is but that which he hath seene?

Together linkt with adamantine chains.

And painefull pleasure turnes to pleasing paine.

Fresh spring the herald of love's mighty king.

Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, The sailing pine,the cedar proud and tall, The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry, The builder oak, sole king of forests all, The aspin good for staves, the cypress funeral, The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage, the fir that weepest still, The yew obedient to the bender's will, The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill, The myrrh sweet-bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill, The fruitful olive, and the platane round, The carver holm, the maple seldom inward sound.

Full many mischiefs follow cruel wrath; Abhorred bloodshed and tumultuous strife Unmanly murder and unthrifty scath, Bitter despite, with rancor's rusty knife; And fretting grief the enemy of life; All these and many evils more, haunt ire.

But O the exceeding grace Of highest God, that loves his creatures so, And all his works with mercy doth embrace, That blessed angels, he sends to and fro, To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe.

She bathed with roses red, And violets blew. And all the sweetest flowres That in the forrest grew.

Such is the power of love in gentle mind, That it can alter all the course of kind.

So much more profitable and gracious is doctrine by example than by rule.

All that in this delightful garden grows should happy be and have immortal bliss.

Vain-glorious man, when fluttering wind does blow In his light wing's, is lifted up to sky; The scorn of-knighthood and true chivalry. To think, without desert of gentle deed And noble worth, to be advanced high, Such praise is shame, but honour, virtue's meed, Doth bear the fairest flower in honourable seed.

What man so wise, what earthly wit so ware, As to descry the crafty cunning train, By which deceit doth mask in visor fair, And cast her colours dyed deep in grain, To seem like truth, whose shape she well can feign, And fitting gestures to her purpose frame, The guiltless man with guile to entertain?

Men, when their actions succeed not as they would, are always ready to impute the blame thereof to heaven, so as to excuse their own follies.

A sweet attractive kind of grace, A full assurance given by looks, Continual comfort in a face, The lineaments of Gospel books-- I trow that countenance cannot lye Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.

For if good were not praised more than ill, None would chuse goodness of his own free will.

For since mine eyes your joyous sight did miss, my cheerful day is turned to cheerless night.

Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time.

But times do change and move continually.

Laws ought to be fashioned unto the manners and conditions of the people whom they are meant to benefit, and not imposed upon them according to the simple rule of right.

Discord oft in music makes the sweeter lay.