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Man is Heaven's masterpiece.
FRANCIS QUARLES, Emblems
He that begins to live, begins to die.
FRANCIS QUARLES, Hieroglyphics
Physicians of all men are most happy; what good success they have, the world proclaimeth, and what faults they commit, the earth covereth.
FRANCIS QUARLES, Hieroglyphics
God is alpha and omega in the great world: endeavor to make him so in the little world; make him thy evening epilogue and thy morning prologue; practice to make him thy last thought at night when thou sleepest, and thy first thought in the morning when thou awakest; so shall thy fancy be sanctified in the night, and thy understanding rectified in the day; so shall thy rest be peaceful, thy labors prosperous, thy life pious, and thy death glorious.
FRANCIS QUARLES, Enchiridion
- Fond youth, give o'er,
- And vex thy soul no more
- In seeking what were better far unfound;
- Alas! thy gains
- Are only present pains
- To gather scorpions for a future wound.
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.
Death's a fable. Did not Heaven inspire your equal Elements with living Fire blown from the Spring of Life? Is not that breath Immortal? Come; ye are as free from death as He that made ye: Can the flames expire which he kindled?
- O what a crocodilian world is this,
- Compos'd of treach'ries, and ensnaring wiles!
- She clothes destruction in a formal kiss,
- And lodges death in her deceitful smiles;
- She hugs the soul she hates; and there does prove
- The veriest tyrant, where she vows to love;
- And is a serpent most, when most she seems a dove.
Lust is a sharp spur to vice, which always putteth the affections into a false gallop.
- Disdain to warm thee at lust's smoky fires,
- Scorn, scorn to feed on thy old bloat desires:
- Come, come, my soul, hoist up thy higher sails,
- The wind blows fair; shall we still creep like snails,
- That glide their ways with their own native slimes?
Toyish airs please trivial ears.
- How is the anxious soul of man befool'd in his desire,
- That thinks an hectic fever may be cool'd in flames of fire?
Whosoever obeyeth the devil, casteth himself down: for the devil may suggest, compel he cannot.
Blessings unus'd, pervert into a waste.
- See how the world (whose chaste and pregnant womb
- Of late conceiv'd, and brought forth nothing ill)
- Is now degenerated, and become
- A base adult'ress, whose false births do fill
- The earth with monsters, monsters that do roam
- And rage about, and make a trade to kill:
- Now glutt'ny paunches, and avarice a pawn;
- Pale envy pines, pride swells, and sloth begins to yawn.
Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
- Mark, how the ready hands of Death prepare:
- His bow is bent, and he hath notch'd his dart;
- He aims, he levels at thy slumb'ring heart:
- The wound is posting, O be wise, beware.
- The strong desires of man's insatiate breast may stand possess'd
- Of all that earth can give; but earth can give no rest.
It is a most just punishment, that man should lose that freedom, which man could not use, yet had power to keep, if he would; and that he who had knowledge to do what was right, and did not should be deprived of the knowledge of what was right; and that he who would not do righteously, when he had the power, should lose the power to do it, when he had the will.
- For trash and toys,
- And grief-engend'ring joys,
- What torment seems too sharp for flesh and blood;
- What bitter pills,
- Compos'd of real ills,
- Men swallow down to purchase one false good!
O lust, thou infernal fire, whose fuel is gluttony; whose flame is pride, whose sparkles are wanton words; whose smoke is infamy; whose ashes are uncleanness; whose end is hell.
- Alas! fond child,
- How are thy thoughts beguil'd
- To hope for honey from a nest of wasps?
- Thou may'st as well
- Go seek for ease in hell,
- Or sprightly nectar from the mouths of asps.
- The world's a hive,
- From whence thou canst derive
- No good, but what thy soul's vexation brings:
- But case thou meet
- Some petty-petty sweet,
- Each drop is guarded with a thousand stings.
- Whose gold is double with a careful hand,
- His cares are double.
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