221 Quotes by Philip Sidney

When it shall please God to bring thee to man’s estate, use great providence and circumspection in choosing thy wife. For from thence will spring all thy future good or evil; and it is an action of life, like unto a stratagem of war; wherein a man can err but once!

To be ambitious of true honor and of the real glory and perfection of our nature is the very principle and incentive of virtue; but to be ambitious of titles, place, ceremonial respects, and civil pageantry, is as vain and little as the things are which we court.

It is a lively spark of nobleness to descend in most favour to one when he is lowest in affliction.

Confidence in one’s self is the chief nurse of magnanimity, which confidence, notwithstanding, doth not leave the care of necessary furniture for it; and therefore, of all the Grecians, Homer doth ever make Achilles the best armed.

Doing good is the only certainly happy action of a man’s life.

As in labor, the more one doth exercise, the more one is enabled to do, strength growing upon work; so with the use of suffering, men’s minds get the habit of suffering, and all fears and terrors are not to them but as a summons to battle, whereof they know beforehand they shall come off victorious.

If you neglect your work, you will dislike it; if you do it well, you will enjoy it.

There is a certain delicacy which in yielding conquers; and with a pitiful look makes one find cause to crave help one’s self.

Indeed, the Roman laws allowed no person to be carried to the wars but he that was in the soldiers' roll.