Andrew Marvell Quotes

Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

So Man, declining alwayes, disappears
In the weak Circles of increasing Years;
And his short Tumults of themselves Compose,
While flowing Time above his Head does close.

This indigested vomit of the Sea,
Fell to the Dutch by Just Propriety.

As lines, so love's oblique, may well
Themselves in every angle greet :
But ours, so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

No creature loves an empty space;
Their bodies measure out their place.

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear!
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men;
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow.
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.

If these the Times, then this must be the Man.

[Andrew Marvell on Oliver Cromwell]

How should I avoid to be her slave, Whose subtle art invisibly can wreath My fetters of the very air I breath?

While thus he threw his Elbow round, Depopulating all the Ground, And, with his whistling Sythe, does cut Each stroke between the Earth and Root, The edged Stele by careless chance Did into his own Ankle glance; And there among the Grass fell down, by his own Sythe, the Mower mown.

Now therefore while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

For Juliana comes, and she, what I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.

To make a bank was a great plot of state;
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.

Popery is such a thing as cannot, but for want of a word to express it, be called a religion; nor is it to be mentioned with that civility which is otherwise decent to be used in speaking about the differences of human opinion about divine matters...There has now for divers years a design been carried on, to change the lawful government of England into an absolute tyranny, and to convert the established Protestant religion into downright Popery...If under his present Majesty we have as yet seen no more visible effects of the same spirit than the firing of London...it is not to be attributed to the good nature or better principles of that sect, but to the wisdom of his Holiness, who observes that we are not of late so dangerous Protestants as to deserve any special mark of his indignation, but that we may be made better use of to the wrecking of those that are of our religion, and that if he do not disturb us, there are those amongst ourselves that are leading us into a fair way of reconciliation with him.

My vegetable love will grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.

As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.