Fulke Greville Quotes

Fulke Greville shares reflective, solemn thoughts on fame, friendship, and desire, ideal for readers who appreciate thoughtful, old-world melancholy.

18 quotes

  1. In night when colours all to black are cast, Distinction lost, or gone down with the light; The eye-a watch to inward senses placed, Not seeing, yet still having power of sight- Gives vain alarums to the inward sense.

  2. Three things there be in man's opinion dear, Fame, many friends, and fortune's dignities: False visions all, which in our sense appear, To sanctify desire's idolatry.

  3. We that are bound by vows and by promotion, With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites, To teach belief in good and still devotion, To preach of heaven's wonders and delights- Yet, when each of us in his own heart looks, He finds the God there far unlike his books.

  4. O wearisome condition of humanity!

  5. And out of mind as soon as out of sight. 1

  6. Hard-hearted minds relent and rigor's tears abound, And envy strangely rues his end, in whom no fault was found. Knowledge her light hath lost, valor hath slain her knight, Sidney is dead, dead is my friend, dead is the world's delight.

  7. The mind of man is this world's true dimension; and knowledge is the measure of the mind.

  8. We should do by our cunning as we do by our courage--always have it ready to defend ourselves, never to offend others.

  9. A lively and agreeable man has not only the merit of liveliness and agreeableness himself, but that also of awakening them in others.

  10. I have often thought that the nature of women was interior to that of men in general, but superior in particular.

  11. Good-humor will sometimes conquer ill-humor, but ill-humor will conquer it oftener; and for this plain reason, good-humor must operate on generosity, ill-humor on meanness.

  12. I hardly know so melancholy a reflection as that parents are necessarily the sole directors of the management of children, whether they have or have not judgment, penetration or taste to perform the task.

  13. Respect is better procured by exacting than soliciting it.

  14. We laugh heartily to see a whole flock of sheep jump because one did so. Might not one imagine that superior beings do the same, and for exactly the same reason?

  15. The brains of a pedant however full, are vacant.

  16. I hardly know a sight that raises one's indignation more than that of an enlarged soul joined to a contracted fortune; unless it be that so much more common one, of a contracted soul joined to an enlarged fortune.

  17. I hardly know so true a mark of a little mind as the servile imitation of others.

  18. Unbecoming forwardness oftener proceeds from ignorance than impudence.