John Webster Quotes & Sayings

O me, this place is hell. — John Webster

I am Duchess of Malfi still. — John Webster

Lust carries her sharp whip At her own girdle. — John Webster

Do you not weep?
Other sins only speak, murder shreaks out:
The element of water moistens the earth,
But blood flies upwards and bedews the heavens. — John Webster

Black-birds fatten best in hard weather — John Webster

Oft gay and honoured robes those tortures try:
We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry. — John Webster

What's this flesh? A little cruded milk
Fantastical puff-paste. Our bodies are weaker than those
Paper prisons boys use to keep flies in; more contemptible,
Since our is to preserve earth-worms. Didst thou ever seen
A lark in a cage? Such is the soul in the body: this world
Is like her little turf of grass, and the heaven o'er our heads
Like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge
Of the small compass of our prison. — John Webster

Sometimes the Devil doth preach. — John Webster

Imyself haveheard averygood jest, and havescornedto seem to have so sillya wit as to understand it. — John Webster

Condemn you me for that the duke did love me?
So may you blame some fair and crystal river,
For that some melancholic distracted man
Hath drowned himself in't. — John Webster

Poor maids have more lovers than husbands. — John Webster

A politician is the devil's quilted anvil; He fashions all sins on him, and the blows are never heard. — John Webster

Eagles commonly fly alone. They are crows, daws, and starlings that flock together. — John Webster

I do love these ancient ruins. We never tread upon them but we set Our foot upon some reverend history. — John Webster

Love mixed with fear is sweetness. — John Webster

Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright, But looked to near, have neither heat nor light. — John Webster

Ha, ha, ha, thou entanglest thyself in thine own work like a silkworm. — John Webster

Integrity of life is fame's best friend,
Which nobly, beyond death, shall crown the end. — John Webster

Through darkness diamonds spread their richest light. — John Webster

Men often are valued high, when they are most wretched. — John Webster

Oh, yes, thy sins Do run before thee to fetch fire from hell, To light thee thither. — John Webster

I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exits; and 'tis found
They go on such strange geometrical hinges,
You may open them both ways: any way, for heaven-sake — John Webster

Though lust do masque in ne'er so strange disguise she's oft found witty, but is never wise. — John Webster

How tedious is a guilty conscience! — John Webster

Lay this unto your breast: Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best. — John Webster

See, a good habit makes a child a man, Whereas a bad one makes a man a beast. — John Webster

Fortune's a right whore:
If she give aught, she deals it in small parcels,
That she may take away all at one swoop. — John Webster

Heaven fashioned us of nothing; and we strive to bring ourselves to nothing. — John Webster

The weakest arm is strong enough that strikes with the sword of justice. — John Webster

Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air,
Or all the elements by scruples, I know not,
Nor greatly care. - Shoot. Shoot!
Of all deaths, the violent death is best;
For from ourselves it steals ourselves so fast,
The pain, once apprehended, is quite past. — John Webster

We endure the strokes like anvils or hard steel,
Till pain itself make us no pain to feel. — John Webster

The basic rule for thinking about faith is this: What matters about faith is not us, but the object of faith. Faith isn't primarily a power or capacity in me; it isn't first and foremost an attitude which I adopt; indeed, it's not first of all something which I do. Faith is objective - that is, faith is wholly turned outward to the object of faith. In a real sense, it's not faith itself but that toward which faith is turned that is critically important in getting our thinking straight. What matters about faith is therefore not us but God, the object of faith. But — John Webster

Knowledge Is Power! Train smart and obtain power! — John Webster

The chiefest action for a man of great spirit is never to be out of action ... the soul was never put into the body to stand still. — John Webster

See, the curse of children! In life they keep us frequently in tears, And in the cold grave leave us in pale fears. — John Webster

Lovers die inward that their flames conceal. — John Webster

Take it for words. O woman's poor revenge,
Which dwells but in the tongue! — John Webster

Ambition, madam, is a great man's madness. — John Webster

Man is most happy, when his own actions are arguments and examples of his virtue. — John Webster

You know what whore is. Next the devil adultery,
Enters the devil murder. — John Webster

Pull and pull strongly for your able strength / Must pull down heaven upon me — John Webster

What! because we are poor Shall we be vicious? — John Webster

Were there no heaven nor hell I should be honest. — John Webster

As in this world there are degrees of evils,
So in this world there are degrees of devils. — John Webster

I have long served virtue, And never ta'en wages of her. — John Webster

Woman to man Is either a God or a wolfe. — John Webster

Life isn't our possession, something we own. We're alive as we receive life from God, as the gift of his grace and mercy. — John Webster

We are merely the stars tennis-balls, struck and bandied which way please them. — John Webster

Through the Spirit, Jesus Christ the exalted one generates a new mode of common human life, the life of the Church. To participate in that common human life, hearing the gospel in fellowship under the word of God and living together under the signs of baptism and the Lord's supper, is to exist in a sphere in which God's limitless power is unleashed and extends into the entirety of human life: moral, political, cultural, affective, intellectual. Reason, like everything else, is remade in the sphere of the Church; and theological reason is an activity of the regenerate mind turned towards the gospel of Jesus Christ, which constitutes the Church's origin and vocation. — John Webster

That friend a great man's ruin strongly checks, who rails into his belief all his defects. — John Webster

Heaven-gates are not so highly arched
As princes' palaces; they that enter there
Must go upon their knees. — John Webster

Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle. She died young. — John Webster

The misery of us, that are born great, We are forced to woo because none dare woo us. — John Webster

I myself have loved a lady and pursued her with a great deal of under-age protestation, whom some three or four gallants that have enjoyed would with all their hearts have been glad to have been rid of. 'Tis just like a summer birdcage in a garden: the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out. — John Webster

Vain the ambition of kings Who seek by trophies and dead things To leave a living name behind, And weave but nets to catch the wind. — John Webster

How many ills spring from adultery? First the supreme law that is violated, Nobility oft stain'd with bastardy, Inheritance of land falsely possessed, The husband scorn'd, wife sham'd, and babes unbless'd. — John Webster

That realm is never long in quiet, where the ruler is a soldier. — John Webster

When a man's mind rides faster than his horse can gallop they quickly both tire. — John Webster

Right! There are plots.
Your beauty! Oh, ten thousand curses on 't!
How long have I beheld the devil in crystal!
Thou hast led me, like an heathen sacrifice,
With music, and with fatal yokes of flowers,
To my eternal ruin. Woman to man
Is either a god, or a wolf. — John Webster

'Tis better to be fortunate than wise. — John Webster

Let guilty men remember, their black deeds
Do lean on crutches made of slender reeds. — John Webster

Call for the robin-red-breast and the wren,
Since o'er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flow'rs do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole
The ant, the field-mouse and the mole,
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
And (when gay tombs are robbed) sustain no harm,
But keep the wolf far thence, that's foe to men,
For with his nails he'll dig them up again.
Let holy Church receive him duly,
Since he paid the church-tithes truly. — John Webster

Is not old wine wholesomest, old pippins toothsomest, old wood burn brightest, old linen wash whitest? Old soldiers, sweethearts, are surest, and old lovers are soundest. — John Webster

Sorrow is held the eldest child of sin. — John Webster

And great men do great good, or else great harm. — John Webster

When I go to hell, I mean to carry a bribe: for look you, good gifts evermore make way for the worst persons. — John Webster

Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust
Like diamonds we are cut with our own dust — John Webster

What a strange creature is a laughing fool,
As if a man were created to no use
But only to show his teeth. — John Webster

All things do help the unhappy man to fall. — John Webster

What's a whore? She's like the guilty counterfeited coin Which whosoe're first stamps it brings in trouble all that receive it. — John Webster

All the damnable degrees Of drinking have you staggered through. — John Webster

In all our quest of greatness, like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care, we follow after bubbles, blown in the air. — John Webster

Physicians are like kings- They brook no contradiction. — John Webster

Princes give rewards with their own hands,
But death or punishment by the hands of other. — John Webster

The soul was never put in the body to stand still. — John Webster

So this isn't in any sense acquittal through moral performance, or a reward for good conduct. It's not something earned by years of carefully crafted holiness. It's a wholly "free gift," as Paul says five times in the span of three verses. — John Webster

I account this world a tedious theater,
For I do play a part in 't 'gainst my will. — John Webster

For the subtlest folly proceeds from the subtlest wisdom. — John Webster

O that I were a man, or that I had power

To execute my apprehended wishes!

I would whip some with scorpions. — John Webster

One thing we might do is to try day by day to grasp something which is the simplest and yet the hardest thing for any of us to grasp: that the gospel is true; that growth in the Christian life is simply growth in seeing that the gospel is true; that Jesus Christ is the preeminent reality of all things. — John Webster

When we prohibit others from being different, we end up forfeiting our own right to Liberty ... — John Webster

DUCHESS: Diamonds are of most value,
They say, that have past through most jewellers' hands.
FERDINAND: Whores, by that rule, are precious. — John Webster

Are you out of your princely wits?
What's he? Let me have his beard sawed off and his eyebrows filed more civil! — John Webster

A powerful portfolio of physiological and behavioural evidence now exists to support the case that fish feel pain and that this feeling matters. In the face of such evidence, any argument to the contrary based on the claim that fish 'do not have the right sort of brain' can no longer be called scientific. It is just obstinate. — John Webster

Gold that buys health can never be ill spent, Nor hours laid out in harmless merriment. — John Webster

Are you grown an atheist? Will you turn your body, Which is the goodly palace of the soul, To the soul's slaughter-house? Oh, the curse' d devil, Which doth present us with all other sins Thrice-candied o'er. — John Webster

If all my royal kindred
Lay in my way unto this marriage,
I'ld make them my low foot-steps — John Webster

We had need to borrow that fantastic glass,invented by Galileo the Florentine
To view another spacious world in the moon
and look to find a constant woman there — John Webster

Think't the best voyage that e'er you made like an irregular crab which, though't goes backward, thinks that it goes right, because it goes its own way. — John Webster