Inspirational Quotes by John Selden

“If you have so earth-creeping a mind that it cannot lift itself up to look to the sky of poetry...thus much curse I must send you, in the behalf of all poets, that while you live, you live in love, and never get favour for lacking skill of a sonnet; and, when you die, your memory die from the earth for want of an epitaph.”

“...the poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth.”

“...music, I say, the most divine striker of the senses...”

“Anger, the Stoics said, was a short madness.”

“So, then, the best of the historian is subject to the poet; for whatsoever action or faction, whatsoever counsel, policy, or war-stratagem the historian is bound to recite, that may the poet, if he list, with his imitation make his own, beautifying it both for further teaching and more delighting, as it pleaseth him; having all, from Dante’s Heaven to his Hell, under the authority of his pen.”

“With a sword thou mayest kill thy father, and with a sword thou mayest defend thy prince and country.”

“Few men make themselves masters of the things they write or speak.”

“For grammar it [poetry] might have, but it needs it not; being so easy in itself, and so void of those cumbersome differences of cases, genders, moods, and tenses, which, I think, was a piece of the Tower of Babylon's curse, that a man shoult be put to school to learn his mother-tongue.”

“But hereto is replied that the poets give names to men they write of, which argueth a conceit of an actual truth, and so, not being true, proveth a falsehood. And doth the lawyer lie then, when, under the names of John of the Stile, and John of the Nokes, he putteth his case? But that is easily answered: their naming of men is but to make their picture the more lively, and not to build any history. Painting men, they cannot leave men nameless. We see we cannot play at chess but that we must give names to our chess-men; and yet, me thinks, he were a very partial champion of truth that would say we lied for giving a piece of wood the reverend title of a bishop.”

“Over-mastered by some thoughts, I yeelded an inckie tribute unto them.”

“Who will be taught, if he be not moved with desire to be taught?”

“Preachers say: do as I say, not what I do”

“In quoting of books, quote such authors as are usually read; others you may read for your own satisfaction, but not name them.”

“Never tell your resolution beforehand.”

“Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were the easiest for his feet.”

“As in the candle I know there is both light and heat, but put out the candle, and they are both gone.”

“A king is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness sake. Just as in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat.”

“They that govern most make least noise. In rowing a barge, they that do drudgery work, slash, puff, and sweat; but he that governs, sits quietly at the stern, and scarce is seen to stir.”

“It is not juggling that is to be blamed, but much juggling; for the world cannot be governed without it.”

“Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because it is an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to confute him.”