"Profile and Poems at Poetseers"

George Herbert Music See all quotes by George Herbert →

React to this quote

More by George Herbert

“Wit's an unruly engine, wildly strikingSometimes a friend, sometimes the engineer.”

“A verse may finde him,who a sermon fliesAnd turns delight into a sacrifice.”

“It (my book) is a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed between God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus, my Master, in whose service I have now found perfect freedom.”

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

“Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie:A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby.”

“Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame,When once it is within thee.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Oh, what company good poets are!"

— José Martí

Literature1853–1895

#writing

"An Hispanic-American writer tells me, ‘I will never give up my family language; I would as soon give up my soul.’ Thus he holds to his chest a skein of words, as though it were the source of his famil…"

— Richard Rodriguez

Literature1958

#writing

"The trick is to maintain a kind of naïve amazement at each instant of experience—but, as Montaigne learned, one of the best techniques for doing this is to write about everything. Simply describing an…"

— Sarah Bakewell

Literature1963

#writing