George Chapman

Oh my fame, Live in despite of murder! Take thy wings And haste thee where the grey-eyed Morn perfumes Her rosy chariot with Sabæan spices! Fly, where the Evening from th’Iberian vales Takes on her swarthy shoulders Hecate,

Terror of darkness! O, thou king of flames!

Danger, the spur of all great minds.

A politician must, like lightning, melt The very marrow, and not taint the skin: His ways must not be seen.

Man is a name of honour for a king.

True courtiers should be modest, and not nice; Bold, but not impudent; pleasure love, not vice.

Each natural agent works but to this end,— To render that it works on like itself.

O the dangerous siege Sin lays about us! And the tyranny He exercises when he hath expung’d, Like to the horror of a winter’s thunder, Mix’d with a gushing storm; that suffers nothing To stir abroad on earth, but their own rages,

For as the light Not only serves to show, but render us Mutually profitable; so our lives, In acts exemplary, not only win Ourselves good names, but do to others give Matter for virtuous deeds, by which we live.

Archers ever Have two strings to a bow; and shall great Cupid (Archer of archers both in men and women), Be worse provided than a common archer?

Who to himself is law no law doth need, Offends no law, and is a king indeed.

[Envy] is like a fly, That passes all the body’s soundest parts, And dwells upon the sore.

There is a deep nick in Fortune's restless wheel For each man's good.

This was a sleight well mask'd. O, what is man, Unless he be a Politician?

So our lives In acts exemplary, not only win Ourselves good names, but doth to others give Matter for virtuous deeds, by which we live.

His deeds inimitable, like the sea That shuts still as it opes, and leaves no tracts Nor prints of precedent for poor men's facts.

The old Scythians Painted blind Fortune’s powerful hands with wings, To show her gifts come swift and suddenly, Which, if her favourite be not swift to take, He loses them forever.

And as great seamen, using all their wealth And skills in Neptune's deep invisible paths, In tall ships richly built and ribbed with brass, To put a girdle round about the world.

'Tis leap-year, lady, and therefore very good to enter a courtier.

Where the king's change doth breed the subject's terror, Pure innovation is more gross than error.

Man is a torch borne in the wind; a dream But of a shadow, summ'd with all his substance.

I will neither yield to the song of the siren nor the voice of the hyena, the tears of the crocodile nor the howling of the wolf.

Fair words never hurt the tongue.

Where ambition of place goes before fitness Of birth, contempt and disgrace follow.