John Webster

“When I go to hell, I mean to carry a bribe: for look you, good gifts evermore make way for the worst persons.”

“Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lustLike diamonds we are cut with our own dust”

“That friend a great man's ruin strongly checks, who rails into his belief all his defects.”

“'Tis better to be fortunate than wise.”

“Princes give rewards with their own hands,But death or punishment by the hands of other.”

“We are merely the stars tennis-balls, struck and bandied which way please them.”

“Heaven fashioned us of nothing; and we strive to bring ourselves to nothing.”

“Sorrow is held the eldest child of sin.”

“Fortune’s a right whore:If she give aught, she deals it in small parcels,That she may take away all at one swoop.”

“O that I were a man, or that I had powerTo execute my apprehended wishes!I would whip some with scorpions.”

“Take it for words. O woman’s poor revenge,Which dwells but in the tongue!”

“You know what whore is. Next the devil adultery,Enters the devil murder.”

“Though lust do masque in ne'er so strange disguise she's oft found witty, but is never wise.”

“What a strange creature is a laughing fool,As if a man were created to no useBut only to show his teeth.”

“As in this world there are degrees of evils, So in this world there are degrees of devils.”

“Our believing has no power of itself; we certainly aren’t saved by belief. We’re saved by the grace and goodness and majesty of him in whom we believe—by the one whom we confess as we believe. In a real sense, our belief is nothing in and of itself. It’s simply a looking to him, a listening to him, in which we are wholly absorbed by that which we see and hear.”

“A politician is the devil's quilted anvil; He fashions all sins on him, and the blows are never heard.”

“For the subtlest folly proceeds from the subtlest wisdom.”

“In all our quest of greatness, like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care, we follow after bubbles, blown in the air.”

“Lay this unto your breast: Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best.”