Inspirational Quotes by Francis Quarles
“My soul, sit thou a patient looker-on; Judge not the play before the play is done: Her plot has many changes; every day Speaks a new scene; the last act crowns the play.”
“Let the fear of danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger.”
“The fountain of beauty is the heart, and every generous thought illustrates the walls of your chamber.”
topics: beauty
“Let the lips of the poor be the trumpet of thy gift, lest in seeking applause, thou lose thy reward.”
“Nothing is more pleasing to God than an open hand, and a closed mouth.”
“In giving of thine alms inquire not so much into the person, as his necessity. God looks not so much on the merits of him that requires, as to the manner of him that relieves. If the man deserve not, thou hast given to humanity.”
topics: Charity
“Proportion thy charity to the strength of thine estate, lest God in anger proportion thine estate to the weakness of thy charity.”
“Beware of drunkenness, lest all good men beware of thee. Where drunkenness reigns, there reason is an exile, virtue a stranger, and God an enemy; blasphemy is wit, oaths are rhetoric, and secrets are proclamations.”
topics: Drunkenness
“What treasures here do Mammon's sons behold! Yet know that all that which glitters is not gold.”
topics: Finances
“That friendship will not continue to the end which is begun for an end.”
topics: Friendship
“The voice of humility is God's music, and the silence of humility is God's rhetoric.”
“Humility enforces where neither virtue nor strength can prevail, nor reason.”
topics: Humility
“If thou desire the love of God and man, be humble, for the proud heart, as it loves none but itself, is beloved of none but itself.”
“Flatter not thyself in thy faith in God if thou hast not charity for thy neighbor. ”
topics: Hypocrisy
“Let the greatest part of the news thou nearest be the least part of what thou believest; lest the greatest part of what thou believest be the least part of what is true. Where lies are easily admitted, the father of lies will not easily be kept out.”
topics: Lying
“The way to subject all things to thyself is to subject thyself to reason. Thou shalt govern many if reason govern thee. Wouldst thou be the monarch of a little world? command thyself.”
topics: Reasoning
“Heaven finds an ear when sinners find a tongue.”
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Francis Quarles, an English poet, was born in Romford, Essex, and baptised there on 8 May 1592. Francis was entered at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1608, and subsequently at Lincoln's Inn. He was made cupbearer to the Princess Elizabeth, in 1613, remaining abroad for some years; and before 1629 he was appointed secretary to Ussher, the primate of Ireland.
Francis traced his ancestry to a family settled in England before the Norman Conquest with a long history in royal service.
The work by which Quarles is best known, the Emblems, was originally published in 1635, with grotesque illustrations engraved by William Marshall and others. The Emblems was immensely popular with the common people, but the critics of the 17th and 18th centuries had no mercy on Quarles. Sir John Suckling in his Sessions of the Poets disrespectfully alluded to him as he "that makes God speak so big in's poetry."