John Denham

Sir John Denham poet, son of the Chief Baron of Exchequer in Ireland, was born in Dublin, and educated at Trinity College, Oxford and at Lincoln's Inn in London.

Sourced

• Actions o' th' last age are like almanacks o' th' last year.
  • The Sophy: A Tragedy, Act I, scene ii (1642)

• Ambition is like love, impatient
  Both of delays and rivals.
  • The Sophy: A Tragedy, Act I, scene ii

• Such is our pride, our folly, or our fate,
  That few but such as cannot write, translate.
  • To Sir Richard Fanshaw, Upon his Translation of Pastor Fido, line 1 (1648)

• Nor ought a genius less than his that writ
  Attempt translation.
  • To Sir Richard Fanshaw, Upon his Translation of Pastor Fido, line 9

• Books should to one of these four ends conduce,
  For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.
  • Of Prudence, line 83 (1668)

• Youth, what man's age is like to be doth show,
  We may our ends by our beginnings know.
  • Of Prudence, line 225

• Search not to find what lies too deeply hid,
  Nor to know things, whose knowledge is forbid.
  • Of Prudence, line 231

• Though with those streams he no resemblance hold,
  Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold;
  His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore,
  Search not his bottom, but survey his shore.
  • Cooper's Hill, Line 165.

• Oh, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
  My great example, as it is my theme!
  Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull;
  Strong without rage; without o'erflowing, full.
  • Cooper's Hill, Line 189.

• But whither am I strayed? I need not raise
  Trophies to thee from other men's dispraise;
  Nor is thy fame on lesser ruins built;
  Nor needs thy juster title the foul guilt
  Of Eastern kings, who, to secure their reign,
  Must have their brothers, sons, and kindred slain.
  • On Mr. John Fletcher's Works. Compare: "Poets are sultans, if they had their will; For every author would his brother kill", Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, Prologues (republished in Dramatic Works, 1739); "Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne", Alexander Pope, Prologue to the Satires, line 197.

Misattributed

• We're ne'er like angels till our passion dies.
  • Not by Denham, as often stated, but by Thomas Dekker. It is in his The Honest Whore Part 2, Act I, scene 2