198 Quotes by Edmund Spenser

Go little book, thy self present, As child whose parent is unkent: To him that is the president Of noblesse and of chivalry, And if that Envy bark at thee, As sure it will, for succour flee.

From good to bad, and from bad to worse, From worse unto that is worst of all, And then return to his former fall.

What more felicitie can fall to creature Than to enjoy delight with libertie, And to be lord of all the workes of Nature, To raine in th' aire from earth to highest skie, To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature.

Laws ought to be fashioned unto the manners and conditions of the people whom they are meant to benefit, and not imposed upon them according to the simple rule of right.

Man's wretched state, That floures so fresh at morne, and fades at evening late.

Fretting grief the enemy of life.

Lastly came Winter cloathed all in frize, Chattering his teeth for cold that did him chill; Whilst on his hoary beard his breath did freese, And the dull drops, that from his purpled bill As from a limebeck did adown distill: In his right hand a tipped staffe he held, With which his feeble steps he stayed still; For he was faint with cold, and weak with eld; That scarce his loosed limbes he hable was to weld.

But as it falleth, in the gentlest hearts Imperious love hath highest set his throne, And tyrannizeth in the bitter smarts Of them, that to him buxom are and prone.

At last, the golden orientall gate Of greatest heaven gan to open fayre, And Phoebus, fresh as brydegrome to his mate, Came dauncing forth, shaking his dewie hayre; And hurls his glistring beams through gloomy ayre.