WednesdayFeb 25, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
John Webster (c. 1580 - c. 1634) was an English Jacobean dramatist, a late contemporary of William Shakespeare. His tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage.
Vain the ambition of kings Who seek by trophies and dead things To leave a living name behind, And weave but nets to catch the wind.
Theres nothing of so infinite vexation As mans own thoughts.
I myself have loved a lady and pursued her with a great deal of under-age protestation, whom some three or four gallants that have enjoyed would with all their hearts have been glad to have been rid of. Tis just like a summer birdcage in a garden: the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds that are within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out.
Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright. But looked to near, have neither heat nor light.
And of all axioms this shall win the prize, Tis better to be fortunate than wise.
There is not in nature, a thing that makes man so deformed, so beastly, as doth intemperate anger.
Call for the robin redbreast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young.
I am Duchess of Malfi still.
I know death hath ten thousand several doors For men to take their exits.
Physicians are like kings - they brook no contradiction.
We are merely the stars' tennis-balls, struck and bandied, Which way please them.
But keep the wolf far thence that's foe to men, For with his nails he'll dig them up again.
I have caught An everlasting cold; I have lost my voice Most irrecoverably.
I saw him even now going the way of all flesh.
Past sorrows, let us moderately lament them; For those to come, seek wisely to prevent them.
A mere tale of a tub, my words are idle.
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