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Walter Raleigh

English statesman, soldier and writer (1552–1618)

Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 1552 or 1554 – 29 October 1618) is famed as a writer, poet, spy, and explorer. Note that many alternate spellings of his surname exist, including Rawley, Ralegh, and Rawleigh; although "Raleigh" appears most commonly today, he himself used that spelling only once. His most consistent preference was for "Ralegh".

Flatterers are the worst kind of traitors; for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing; but so shadow and paint all thy vices and follies, as thou shalt never, by their will, discern evil from good, or vice from virtue.
See also The History of the World (Raleigh)

Quotes

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If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy Love.
 
Go, Soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless arrant:
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.
 
Silence in love bewrays more woe
Than words, though ne’er so witty:
A beggar that is dumb, you know,
May challenge double pity.
 
Even such is time, that takes on trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust
My God shall raise me up, I trust!
  • Every fool knoweth that hatreds are the cinders of affection.
    • Letter to Sir Robert Cecil (10 May 1593)
  • No man is wise or safe, but he that is honest.
    • Advice to the Earl of Rutland on his Travels (1596)
  • If all the world and love were young,
    And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
    These pretty pleasures might me move
    To live with thee and be thy Love.

    But fading flowers in every field,
    To winter floods their treasures yield;
    A honey'd tongue, a heart of gall,
    Is Fancy's spring, but Sorrow's fall.

    • The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd (1599), st. 1–2
    • Inspired by Christopher Marlowe's The Passionate Shepherd to his Love
  • Go, Soul, the body’s guest,
    Upon a thankless arrant:
    Fear not to touch the best;
    The truth shall be thy warrant:
    Go, since I needs must die,
    And give the world the lie.

    Say to the court, it glows.
    And shines like rotten wood;
    Say to the church, it shows
    What’s good, and doth no good:
    If church and court reply,
    Then give them both the lie.

    • The Lie (1608)
  • So when thou hast, as I
    Commanded thee, done blabbing —
    Although to give the lie
    Deserves no less than stabbing —
    Stab at thee he that will,
    No stab the soul can kill.
    • The Lie (1608).
  • [History] hath triumphed over time, which besides it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over.
    • The History of the World (1614), Preface
  • Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth.
    • The History of the World (1614), Preface
  • O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet [Here lies]!
    • The History of the World Book V, chapter 6
  • For whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and consequently the world itself.
    • A Discourse of the Invention of Ships, Anchors, Compass, &c
  • Our passions are most like to floods and streams;
    The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.
    • Sir Walter Raleigh to the Queen (published 1655); alternately reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) as:
      "Passions are likened best to floods and streams:
      The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb"
      and titled The Silent Lover. Compare: "Altissima quæque flumina minimo sono labi", (translated: "The deepest rivers flow with the least sound"), Q. Curtius, vii. 4. 13. "Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep", William Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI. act iii. sc. i.
  • Cowards fear to die; but courage stout,
    Rather than live in snuff, will be put out.
    • On the snuff of a candle the night before he died; Raleigh's Remains, p. 258, ed. 1661
  • Silence in love bewrays more woe
    Than words, though ne’er so witty:
    A beggar that is dumb, you know,
    May challenge double pity.
    • The Silent Lover, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
  • Fain would I, but I dare not; I dare, and yet I may not;
    I may, although I care not, for pleasure when I play not.
    • Fain Would I, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
  • Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay.
    • Verses to Edmund Spenser, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919); Comparable to: "Methought I saw my late espoused saint", John Milton, Sonnet xxiii, and "Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne", William Wordsworth, Sonnet.
  • Even such is time, that takes in trust
    Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
    And pays us but with age and dust;
    Who in the dark and silent grave,
    When we have wandered all our ways,
    Shuts up the story of our days.
    But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
    My God shall raise me up, I trust!
  • Shall I, like an hermit, dwell
    On a rock or in a cell?
    • Poem reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
  • If she undervalue me,
    What care I how fair she be?
    • Poem reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "If she be not so to me, / What care I how fair she be?", George Wither, The Shepherd's Resolution
  • Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.
    • Poem written in a glass window obvious to the Queen's eye, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). "Her Majesty, either espying or being shown it, did under-write, 'If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all'", Thomas Fuller, Worthies of England, vol. i. p. 419

Instructions to his Son and to Posterity (published 1632)

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Bestow therefore thy youth so, that thou mayest have comfort to remember it when it hath forsaken thee, and not sigh and grieve at the account thereof.
  • Better were it to be unborn than ill-bred.
    • Chapter II
  • Remember...that if thou marry for beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which perchance will never last nor please thee one year; and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all, for the desire dieth when it is attained, and the affection perisheth when it is satisfied.
    • Chapter II
  • Bestow therefore thy youth so, that thou mayest have comfort to remember it when it hath forsaken thee, and not sigh and grieve at the account thereof.
    • Chapter II
  • Take care that thou be not made a fool by flatterers, for even the wisest men are abused by these. Know, therefore, that flatterers are the worst kind of traitors; for they will strengthen thy imperfections, encourage thee in all evils, correct thee in nothing; but so shadow and paint all thy vices and follies, as thou shalt never, by their will, discern evil from good, or vice from virtue. And, because all men are apt to flatter themselves, to entertain the additions of other men's praises is most perilous. Do not therefore praise thyself, except thou wilt be counted a vain-glorious fool; neither take delight in the praises of other men, except thou deserve it, and receive it from such as are worthy and honest, and will withal warn thee of thy faults; for flatterers have never any virtue — they are ever base, creeping, cowardly persons. A flatterer is said to be a beast that biteth smiling: it is said by Isaiah in this manner — "My people, they that praise thee, seduce thee, and disorder the paths of thy feet;" and David desired God to cut out the tongue of a flatterer.
    But it is hard to know them from friends, they are so obsequious and full of protestations; for as a wolf resembles a dog, so doth a flatterer a friend. A flatterer is compared to an ape, who, because she cannot defend the house like a dog, labour as an ox, or bear burdens as a horse, doth therefore yet play tricks and provoke laughter. Thou mayest be sure, that he that will in private tell thee thy faults is thy friend; for he adventures thy mislike, and doth hazard thy hatred; for there are few men that can endure it, every man for the most part delighting in self-praise, which is one of the most universal follies which bewitcheth mankind.
    • Chapter III
  • Speaking much also is a sign of vanity; for he that is lavish in words is a niggard in deeds.
    • Chapter IV
  • Be advised what thou dost discourse of, and what thou maintainest whether touching religion, state, or vanity; for if thou err in the first, thou shalt be accounted profane; if in the second, dangerous; if in the third, indiscreet and foolish.
    • Chapter IV
  • No man is esteemed for gay garments but by fools and women.
    • Chapter VII

The Cabinet Council (published 1658)

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All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest.
  • There is nothing exempt from the peril of mutation.
    • Chapter 24
  • All histories do shew, and wise politicians do hold it necessary that, for the well-governing of every Commonweal, it behoveth man to presuppose that all men are evil, and will declare themselves so to be when occasion is offered.
    • Chapter 25
  • It is the nature of men, having escaped one extreme, which by force they were constrained long to endure, to run headlong into the other extreme, forgetting that virtue doth always consist in the mean.
    • Chapter 25
  • All, or the greatest part of men that have aspired to riches or power, have attained thereunto either by force or fraud, and what they have by craft or cruelty gained, to cover the foulness of their fact, they call purchase, as a name more honest. Howsoever, he that for want of will or wit useth not those means, must rest in servitude and poverty. The reason thereof is, that as nature hath laid before men the chief of all fortunes, so she disposes them rather to rapine than honest industry, and more subject to bad than good endeavours : hereof it cometh, that one man eateth another, and he that is weakest must always go to the worst.
    • Chapter 25
  • A wise man ought not to desire to inhabit that country where men have more authority than laws. For indeed that country deserves to be desired where every one may securely enjoy his own, not that where with facility it may be taken away; and that friends, for fear to lose their own, are enforced to forsake them.
    • Chapter 25
  • He that doth not as other men do, but endeavoureth that which ought to be done, shall thereby rather incur peril than preservation; for whoso laboureth to be sincerely perfect and good shall necessarily perish, living among men that are generally evil.
    • Chapter 25
  • Historians desiring to write the actions of men, ought to set down the simple truth, and not say anything for love or hatred; also to choose such an opportunity for writing as it may be lawful to think what they will, and write what they think, which is a rare happiness of the time.
    • Chapter 25
  • Whoso taketh in hand to govern a multitude, either by way of liberty or principality, and cannot assure himself of those persons that are enemies to that enterprise, doth frame a state of short perseverance.
    • Chapter 25
  • Whoso desireth to govern well and securely, it behoveth him to have a vigilant eye to the proceedings of great princes, and to consider seriously of their designs.
    • Chapter 25
  • War begets quiet, quiet idleness, idleness disorder, disorder ruin; likewise ruin order, order virtue, virtue glory and good fortune.
    • Chapter 25


Attributed

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What is our life? A play of passion;
our mirth: the music of division;
our mother's wombs: the tiring houses be
where we are dressed for this short comedy.
Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is
that sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
Thus march we playing to our latest rest,
only we die in earnest—that's no jest.
 
Fame's but a hollow echo; gold, pure clay;
Honour, the darling but of one short day,
Beauty—th' eye's idol—but a damasked skin;
State, but a golden prison to live in
And torture free-born minds.
  • What is our life? A play of passion;
    our mirth: the music of division;
    our mother's wombs: the tiring houses be
    where we are dressed for this short comedy.
    Heaven the judicious sharp spectator is
    that sits and marks still who doth act amiss.
    Our graves that hide us from the searching sun
    are like drawn curtains when the play is done.
    Thus march we playing to our latest rest,
    only we die in earnest, that's no jest.
    • "On the Life of Man" (1612)
  • Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.
    • According to Thomas Fuller's History of the Worthies of England vol. 1 (1662), p. 4, this was written by Raleigh on a window-pane, prompting Elizabeth I to add "If thy heart fails thee, climb not at all".
  • The world itself is but a larger prison, out of which some are daily selected for execution.
    • Supposed to have been said by Raleigh to his friends as he was being taken to prison, on the day before his execution (William Stebbing Sir Walter Raleigh (1891), chapter 30)
  • So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lies.
    • Stebbing's Sir Walter Raleigh, chapter 30, gives these as Raleigh's words on being asked by the executioner which way he wanted to lay his head on the block.
  • What dependence can I have on the alleged events of ancient history, when I find such difficulty in ascertaining the truth regarding a matter that has taken place only a few minutes ago, and almost in my own presence!
  • Fame's but a hollow echo; gold, pure clay;
    Honour, the darling but of one short day,
    Beauty—th' eye's idol—but a damasked skin;
    State, but a golden prison to live in
    And torture free-born minds.
  • Why dost thou not strike? Strike, man!
    • To his executioner, as reported in Curiosities of Literature (1835) by Isaac Disraeli, p. 302


Misattributed

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  • Shall I, wasting in despair,
    Die because a woman's fair?
    Or make pale my cheeks with care
    'Cause another's rosy are?
    Be she fairer than the day,
    Or the flow'ry meads in May,
    If she think not well of me,
    What care I how fair she be?

Quotes about Raleigh

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  • If your lordships will look back to a period of the English history, in which the circumstances are reversed, in which the Spaniards were the complainants, you will see how differently they succeeded: you will see one of the ablest men, one of the bravest officers this or any other country ever produced (it is hardly necessary to mention the name of sir Walter Raleigh) sacrificed by the meanest prince that ever sat upon the throne, to the vindictive jealousy of that haughty court. James the First was base enough, at the instance of Gondomar, to suffer a sentence against sir Walter Raleigh, for another supposed offence, to be carried into execution almost twelve years after it had been passed. This was the pretence. His real crime was, that he had mortally offended the Spaniards, while he acted by the King's express orders, and under his commission.
    • Earl of Chatham, speech in the House of Lords (22 November 1770), quoted in W. S. Taylor and J. H. Pringle (eds.), Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham: Vol. IV (1840), p. 6
  • Recreate yourself with Sir Walter Raleigh's History: it's a Body of History; and will add much more to your understanding than fragments of Story.
    • Oliver Cromwell to Richard Cromwell (2 April 1650), quoted in Thomas Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: With Elucidations, Vol. II (1846), p. 161
  • The high position Ralegh had occupied, the greatness of his downfall, the general feeling that the sentence pronounced in 1603 was unjust, and that the carrying of it into execution in 1618 was base, all contributed to exalt the popular appreciation of his character. His enemies had denounced him as proud, covetous, and unscrupulous, and much evidence is extant in support of the unfavourable judgment. But the circumstances of his death concentrated men's attention on his bold exploits against his country's enemies, and to him was long attributed an importance in affairs of state or in conduct of war which the recital of his acts fails to justify. He was regarded as the typical champion of English interests against Spanish aggression... Physical courage, patriotism, resourcefulness may be ungrudgingly ascribed to him. But he had small regard for truth, and reckless daring was the main characteristic of his stirring adventures as politician, soldier, sailor, and traveller. Ralegh acquired, however, a less ambiguous reputation in the pacific sphere of literature, and his mental calibre cannot be fairly judged, nor his versatility fully realised, until his achievements in poetry, in history, and political philosophy have been taken into account. However impetuous and rash was he in action, he surveyed life in his writings with wisdom and insight, and recorded his observations with dignity and judicial calmness.
  • The design and style of Ralegh's ‘History of the World’ are instinct with a magnanimity which places the book among the noblest of literary enterprises. Throughout it breathes a serious moral purpose. It illustrates the sureness with which ruin overtakes ‘great conquerors and other troublers of the world’ who neglect law, whether human or divine, and it appropriately closes with an apostrophe to death of rarely paralleled sublimity. Ralegh did not approach a study of history in a critical spirit, and his massive accumulations of facts have long been superannuated. But he showed an enlightened appreciation of the need of studying geography together with history, and of chronological accuracy. His portraits of historical personages—Queen Jezebel, Demetrius, Pyrrhus, Epaminondas—are painted to the life; and the frequent digressions in which he deals with events of his own day, or with philosophic questions of perennial interest, such as the origin of law, preserve for the work much of its original freshness. Remarks on the tactics of the armada, the capture of Fayal, the courage of Englishmen, the tenacity of Spaniards, England's relations with Ireland, emerge in the most unlikely surroundings, and are always couched in judicial and dignified language. His style, although often involved, is free from conceits.
  • In the history of the formative period of English overseas expansion, Raleigh occupies an enduring place. He does so, not because of his long protagonism of English as against Spanish imperialism, nor from any lasting achievement in the establishment of English authority overseas. His contribution was made rather to English colonial theory. In the first place, he did as much as any other individual of his age to place American colonization in the public mind as a fixed and continuing objective. Only Richard Hakluyt the younger can stand at his side in this respect, and only his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, can claim any importance among the other Elizabethan colonial enthusiasts.
  • Most of his contemporaries regarded the Spanish empire as something to be robbed: Raleigh thought of it as something to be replaced by an English empire... What he did do in this respect was to introduce the concept of tropical imperialism into English colonial thinking... It was the social dynamics of the England of the late Tudor and early Stuart period which made English overseas colonization possible, but Raleigh's ideas and experiments helped in its realization. That is his principal claim to an important position in the making of an English overseas empire.
  • Ralegh was, though not the first, yet the centre of the whole group which carried out the most persistent attack upon the great colonial question — England's share in the opening-up of the New World. Oxford in our time was right to name its first Empire club after Ralegh, for he was the most conscious and determined of the makers of Empire. To have destined North America for the dominion of English-speaking people can hardly be regarded as the work of one whose career was a failure.
    • A. L. Rowse, 'The Tudor Character', The English Spirit: Essays in History and Literature (1944), p. 94
  • Thou knewest this life
    unfit for thy greatnesse, and thou wert not borne
    for thy selfe but thy Countrie, thou knewest the
    Sea, wherein every great soule should wander.
    • Thomas Scott, Sir VValter Ravvleighs ghost, or Englands forewarner Discouering a secret consultation, newly holden in the Court of Spaine. Together, with his tormenting of Count de Gondemar; and his strange affrightment, confession and publique recantation: laying open many treacheries intended for the subuersion of England (1626), p. 16
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