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SHIRLEY, James Quotes
(1596-1666), English dramatist
Only the actions of the just smell sweet and blossom in the dust.
How poor are all hereditary honors, those poor possessions from another's deeds, unless our own just virtues form our title, and give a sanction to our fond assumption.
Only the actions of the just smell sweet and blossom in the dust.
Only the actions of the just smell sweet and blossom in the dust.
Heaven's the perfection of all that can be said or thought—riches, delight, harmony, health, beauty; and all these not subject to the waste of time, but in their height eternal.
Knaves will thrive where honest plainness knows not how to live.
Fathers their children and themselves abuse, that wealth a husband for their daughters choose.
The honors of a name 'tis just to guard; they are a trust but lent us, which we take, and should, in reverence to the donor's fame, with care transmit them down to other hands.
Religion is so far from barring men any innocent pleasure, or comfort of human life, that it purifies the pleasures of it, and renders them more grateful and generous; and besides this, it brings mighty pleasures of its own, those of a glorious hope, a serene mind, a calm and undisturbed conscience, which do far outrelish the most studied and artificial luxuries.
A wife's a man's best piece; who till he marries, wants making up: she is the shrine to which nature doth send us forth on pilgrimage; she is the good man's paradise, and the bad's first step to heaven, a treasure which, who wants, cannot be trusted to posterity, nor pay his own debts; she's a golden sentence writ by our Maker, which the angels may discourse of, only men know how to use, and none but devils violate.
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