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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!
If thou stand guilty of oppression, or wrongfully possessed of another's right, see thou make restitution before thou givest an alms; if otherwise, what art thou but a thief?
FRANCIS QUARLES, attributed, Day's Collacon
Let the greatest part of the news thou hearest be the least part of what thou believest, lest the greatest part of what thou believest to be the least part of what is true.
FRANCIS QUARLES, Enchiridion Institutions
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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