George Herbert Quotes

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, / The bridal of the earth and sky.

Man is one world, and hath / Another to attend him.

Words are women, deeds are men.

Lie not, neither to thyself, nor man, nor God. Let mouth and heart be one; beat and speak together, and make both felt in action. It is for cowards to lie.

There is an hour wherein a man might be happy all his life, could he find it.

Where the drink goes in, there the wit goes out.

Love makes all hard hearts gentle.

Honor and profit lie not all in one sack.

The wind in ones face makes one wise.

Great business turns on a little pin.

Exalted Manna, gladness of the best, Heaven in ordinary, man well drest.

God's breath in man returning to his birth, The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage.

Nothing wears clothes, but Man; nothing doth need But he to wear them.

After so many deaths I live and write.

Could have recovered greenness?

Grief melts away Like snow in May, As if there were no such cold thing.

Good cable, to enforce and draw, And be thy law, While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.

O what a sight were Man, if his attires Did alter with his minde; And like a dolphins skinne, his clothes combin'd With his desires!

A verse may find him, who a sermon flies, And turn delight into a sacrifice.

Advise none to marry or go to war.

God strikes with his finger, and not with all his arm.

Lend only what you can afford to lose.

Learn weeping, and thou shalt laugh gaining.

A bad workman quarrels with his tools.

Good workmen are seldom rich.

Do not grudge To pick out treasures from an earthen pot. The worst speaks something good.

All are presumed good till they are found at fault.

True beauty lives on high. Ours is but a flame borrowed thence.

When once thy foot enters the church, be bare. God is more there than thou: for thou art there Only by his permission. Then beware, That leads from earth to heaven.

No sooner is a Temple built to God but the Devill builds a Chappell hard by.

A morning sunne, and a wine-bred child, and a latin-bred woman, seldome end well.

The death of wolves is the safety of the sheep.

The wearer knowes, where the shoe wrings.

When thou dost tell another's jest, therein Omit the oaths, which true wit cannot need; Pick out of tales the mirth, but not the sin.

The Frier preached against stealing, and had a goose in his sleeve.

You cannot know wine by the barrell.

Wine makes all sorts of creatures at table.

It is a poor sport that is not worth a candle.

By no means run in debt: take thine own measure, Who cannot live on twenty pound a year, Cannot on forty.

Gold thou mayst safely touch; but if it stick Unto thy hands, it woundeth to the quick.

Beauty draws more than oxen.

Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave, Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye, Thy root is even in the grave, And thou must die.

To a close shorn sheep, God gives wind by measure.

God sends cold according to clothes.

Sorrow was all my soul; I scarce believed, Till grief did tell me roundly, that I lived.

I read, and sigh, and wish I were a tree; For sure then I should grow To fruit or shade: at least some bird would trust Her household to me, and I should be just.

He that makes a good war makes a good peace.

God sends a curst cow short horns.

To a boiling pot flies come not.

A broken Altar, Lord, thy servant rears, Made of a heart, and cemented with tears.