George Chapman
52 quotes
Biography
"Homer's poems were writ from a free fury, an absolute and full soul; Virgil's out of a courtly, laborious, and altogether imitatory spirit: not a simile he hath but is Homer's; not an invention, person, or disposition but is wholly or originally built upon Homerical foundations, and in many places hath the very words Homer useth."
"Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'."
"Obscurity in affection of words and indigested conceits is pedantical and childish."
"Use makes things nothing huge, and huge things nothing."
"Too much desire to please, pleasure divorces."
"Cupid’s bonfires burning in the eye."
"And eat your entrails out with ecstacies."
"None ever loved but at first sight they loved."
"An ill weed grows apace."
"Black is a pearl in a woman's eye."
"The use of time is fate."
"Sin is ashamed of sin."
"Women are most won, when men merit least."
"Love's special lesson is to please the eye."
"News as wholesome as the morning air."
"Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools."
"Marriage is ever made by destiny."
"Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee. Light gains make heavy purses. 'Tis good to be merry and wise."
"Why, do nothing; be like a gentleman, be idle; the curse of man is labour. Wipe thy bum with testones, and make ducks and drakes with shillings."
"Only a few industrious Scots perhaps, who indeed are dispersed over the face of the whole earth. But as for them, there are no greater friends to Englishmen and England, when they are out on 't, in the world, than they are. And for my own part, I would a hundred thousand of them were there [Virginia]; for we are all one countrymen now, ye know, and we should find ten times more comfort of them there than we do here."
"Enough<!--old spelling: 'inough'--> is as good as a feast."
"Fair words never hurt the tongue."
"Let pride go afore, shame will follow after."
"I will neither yield to the song of the siren nor the voice of the hyena, the tears of the crocodile nor the howling of the wolf."
"'Tis leap-year, lady, and therefore very good to enter a courtier."