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Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas

French writer

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544 – July 1590) was a French poet.

Quotes

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La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)

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La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (Roughly translated: The first week; or, the Creation of the world) (1578).
  • The world's a stage where God's omnipotence,
    His justice, knowledge, love, and providence
    Do act the parts.
  • Mercy and justice, marching cheek by joule.
    • First Week, First Day.
  • What is well done is done soon enough.
    • First Week, First Day.
  • And swans seem whiter if swart crowes be by.
    • First Week, First Day.
  • And reads, though running, all these needful motions.
    • First Week, First Day. Compare: "Shine by the side of every path we tread / With such a lustre, he that runs may read", William Cowper, Tirocinium, line 79.
  • Not unlike the bear which bringeth forth
    In the end of thirty dayes a shapeless birth;
    But after licking, it in shape she drawes,
    And by degrees she fashions out the pawes,
    The head, and neck, and finally doth bring
    To a perfect beast that first deformed thing.
    • First Week, First Day. Compare: "I had not time to lick it into form, as a bear doth her young ones", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.
  • Bright-flaming, heat-full fire,
    The source of motion.
    • First Week, Second Day. Compare: "Heat considered as a Mode of Motion" (title of a treatise, 1863), John Tyndall.
  • Much like the French (or like ourselves, their apes),
    Who with strange habit do disguise their shapes;
    Who loving novels, full of affectation,
    Receive the manners of each other nation.
    • First Week, Second Day. Compare: "Report of fashions in proud Italy, Whose manners still our apish nation Limps after in base imitation", William Shakespeare, Richard II, act ii. sc. 1.
  • Hot and cold, and moist and dry.
    • First Week, Second Day. Compare: "For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce, Strive here for mast'ry", John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book ii, line 898.
  • From the foure corners of the worlde doe haste.
    • First Week, Second Day. Compare: "Come the three corners of the world in arms, And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue,If England to itself do rest but true", William Shakespeare, King John, Act v. Sc. 7.
  • Oft seen in forehead of the frowning skies.
    • First Week, Second Day. Compare: "Flames in the forehead of the morning sky", John Milton, Lycidas, line 168.
  • With tooth and nail.
    • First Week, Second Day.
  • 'T is what you will,—or will be what you would.
    • First Week, Third Day.
  • Or savage beasts upon a thousand hils.
    • First Week, Third Day. Compare: "The cattle upon a thousand hills", Psalm i.
  • Not that the earth doth yield
    In hill or dale, in forest or in field,
    A rarer plant.
    • First Week, Third Day. Compare: "Come live with me, and be my love; And we will all the pleasures prove That hills and valleys, dales and fields, Woods or steepy mountain yields", Christopher Marlowe, The Passionate Shepherd to his Love.
  • To man the earth seems altogether
    No more a mother, but a step-dame rather.
    • First Week, Third Day. Compare: "It is far from easy to determine whether she [Nature] has proved to him a kind parent or a merciless stepmother" Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book vii, Section 1.
  • For where's the state beneath the firmament
    That doth excel the bees for government?
    • First Week, Fifth Day, Part i. Compare: "So work the honey-bees, Creatures that by a rule in Nature teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom", William Shakespeare, Henry V, act i. sc. 3.
  • A good turn at need,
    At first or last, shall be assur'd of meed.
    • First Week, Sixth Day.
  • There is no theam more plentifull to scan
    Than is the glorious goodly frame of man.
    • First Week, Sixth Day. Compare: "Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man;

A mighty maze! but not without a plan", Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle i, Line 1, Quotation 1.

  • Or almost like a spider, who, confin'd
    In her web's centre, shakt with every winde,
    Moves in an instant if the buzzing flie
    Stir but a string of her lawn canapie.
    • First Week, Sixth Day. Compare: "Much like a subtle spider which doth sit In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide; If aught do touch the utmost thread of it, She feels it instantly on every side", John Davies, The Immortality of the Soul.
  • These lovely lamps, these windows of the soul.
  • Even as a surgeon, minding off to cut
    Some cureless limb,—before in ure he put
    His violent engins on the vicious member,
    Bringeth his patient in a senseless slumber,
    And grief-less then (guided by use and art),
    To save the whole, sawes off th' infested part.
    • First Week, Sixth Day.
  • Two souls in one, two hearts into one heart.
    • First Week, Sixth Day. Compare: "Two friends, two bodies with one soul inspir'd", Alexander Pope, The Iliad of Homer, Book xvi, line 267.
  • Which serves for cynosure
    To all that sail upon the sea obscure.
    • First Week, Seventh Day.

La Seconde Semaine (1584)

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La Seconde Semaine (Roughly translated: The Second Week) (1584).
  • Turning our seed-wheat-kennel tares,
    To burn-grain thistle, and to vaporie darnel,
    Cockle, wild oats, rough burs, corn-cumbring
    Tares.
    • Second Week, First Day, Part iii. Compare: "Crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds, With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow In our sustaining corn", William Shakespeare, King Lear, act iv. sc. 4.
  • Apoplexie and lethargie,
    As forlorn hope, assault the enemy.
    • Second Week, First Day, Part iii.
  • Living from hand to mouth.
    • Second Week, First Day, Part iv.
  • Yielding more wholesome food than all the messes
    That now taste-curious wanton plenty dresses.
    • Second Week, First Day, Part i. Compare: "Herbs, and other country messes, Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses", John Milton, L'Allegro, line 85.
  • In every hedge and ditch both day and night
    We fear our death, of every leafe affright.
    • Second Week, First Day, Part iii. Compare: "The sense of death is most in apprehension; And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies", William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act iii. Sc. 1.
  • In the jaws of death.
    • Second Week, First Day, Part iv. Compare: "Out of the jaws of death", William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act iii. Sc. 4.
  • Did thrust as now in others' corn his sickle.
    • Second Week, Second Day, Part ii. Compare: "Never thrust your own sickle into another’s corn", Publius Syrus, Maxim 593.
  • Will change the pebbles of our puddly thought
    To orient pearls.
  • Soft carpet-knights, all scenting musk and amber.
    • Second Week, Third Day, Part i. Compare: "As much valour is to be found in feasting as in fighting, and some of our city captains and carpet knights will make this good, and prove it", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part i, Section 2, Membrane 2, Subsection 2.
  • The will for deed I doe accept.
    • Second Week, Third Day, Part ii. Compare: "You must take the will for the deed", Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation, Dialogue ii.
  • Only that he may conform
    To tyrant custom.
  • My lovely living boy,
    My hope, my hap, my love, my life, my joy.
    • Second Week, Fourth Day, Book ii. Compare: "My fair son! My life, my joy, my food, my all the world", William Shakespeare, King John, act iii. sc. 4.
  • Who breaks his faith, no faith is held with him.
    • Second Week, Fourth Day, Book ii.
  • Flesh of thy flesh, nor yet bone of thy bone.
    • Second Week, Fourth Day, Book ii.
  • Out of the book of Natur's learned brest.
    • Second Week, Fourth Day, Book ii. Compare: "The book of Nature is that which the physician must read; and to do so he must walk over the leaves", Paracelsus, 1490–1541. (From the Encyclopædia Britannica, ninth edition, vol. xviii. p. 234).
  • Who well lives, long lives; for this age of ours
    Should not be numbered by years, daies, and hours.
    • Second Week, Fourth Day, Book ii. Compare: " A life spent worthily should be measured by a nobler line,—by deeds, not years", Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Pizarro, Act iv, Scene 1.
  • Through thick and thin, both over hill and plain.
    • Second Week, Fourth Day, Book iv. Compare: "Through thick and thin, both over bank and bush", Edmund Spenser, Faerie Queene, Book iii, Canto i, Stanza 17.
  • Weakened and wasted to skin and bone.
    • Second Week, Fourth Day, Book iv. Compare: "Bone and Skin, two millers thin, Would starve us all, or near it; But be it known to Skin and Bone That Flesh and Blood can’t bear it", John Byrom, Epigram on Two Monopolists.

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

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Quotes reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
  • I take the world to be but as a stage,
    Where net-maskt men do play their personage.
    • Dialogue between Heraclitus and Democritus. Compare: "All the world ’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players", William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act ii. Scene 7.
  • Made no more bones.
    • The Maiden Blush.
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