Top 15 John Denham Quotes

We're ne'er like angels till our passion dies.

Search not to find what lies too deeply hid, Nor to know things whose knowledge is forbid; Nor climb on pyramids, which thy head turn round Standing, and whence no safe descent is found.

Let not the pleasing many thee delight, First judge if those whom thou dost please judge right.

Search not to find how other men offend, But by that glass thy own offences mend; Still seek to learn, yet care not much from whom, (So it be learning) or from whence it come. Of thy own actions, others' judgments learn; Often by small, great matters we discern: Youth what man's age is like to be doth show; We may our ends by our beginnings know.

When any great design thou dost intend,
Think of the means, the manner, and the end.

Books should to one of these four ends conduce, For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.

Wisdom of what herself approves makes choice, Nor is led captive by the common voice. Clear-sighted Reason Wisdom's judgment leads, And Sense, her vassal, in her footsteps treads. That thou to Truth the perfect way may'st know, To thee all her specific forms I'll show: He that the way to honesty will learn, First what's to be avoided must discern. Thyself from flatt'ring self-conceit defend, Nor what thou dost not know to know pretend. Some secrets deep in abstruse darkness lie: To search them thou wilt need a piercing eye. Not rashly therefore to such things assent, Which, undeceived, thou after may'st repent; Study and time in these must thee instruct, And others' old experience may conduct. Wisdom herself her ear doth often lend To counsel offer'd by a faithful friend.

Wisdom's first progress is to take a view What's decent or indecent, false or true.

That servile path thou nobly dost decline
Of tracing word by word, and line by line;
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue
To make translations, and translators too;
They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.

Nor ought a genius less than his that writ
Attempt translation.

Such is our pride, our folly, or our fate,
That few but such as cannot write, translate.

[U]ncertain ways unsafest are.

Variety, which all the rest endears.

Oh, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme! Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull; Strong without rage; without o'erflowing, full.

Though with those streams he no resemblance hold, Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold; His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore, Search not his bottom, but survey his shore.