John Webster Quotes

• Then the law to him Is like a foul black cobweb to a spider; He makes it his dwelling, and a prison To entangle those shall feed him.

  John Webster

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• I myself have heard a very good jest, and have scorned to seem to have so silly a wit as to understand it.

  John Webster

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• Oh, yes, thy sins Do run before thee to fetch fire from hell, To light thee thither.

  John Webster

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• Are you grown an atheist? Will you turn your body, Which is the goodly palace of the soul, To the soul’s slaughter-house? Oh, the cursed devil, Which doth present us with all other sins Thrice-candied o’er.

  John Webster

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• I have heard grief named the eldest child of sin.

  John Webster

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• Call for the robin-red-breast and the wren, Since o’er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men.

  John Webster

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• O, the rare tricks of a Machiavellian! He doth not come, like a gross plodding slave, And buffet you to death; no, my quaint knave, He tickles you to death, makes you die laughing.

  John Webster

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• They that sleep with dogs shall rise with fleas.

  John Webster

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• He could not have invented his own ruin, Had he despaired, with more propriety.

  John Webster

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• For your gifts, I’ll return them all; and I do wish That I could make you full executor To all my sins.

  John Webster

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• Woman to man Is either a God or a wolfe.

  John Webster

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• Vittoria: A rape! a rape! Monticeso: How! Vittoria: Yes, you have ravished justice, Forced her to do your pleasure.

  John Webster

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• Sum up my faults, I pray, and you shall find, That beauty, and gay clothes, a merry heart, And a good stomach to a feast, are all, All the poor crimes that you can charge me with.

  John Webster

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• For your names Of whores and murderers, they proceed from you, As if a man should spit against the wind; The filth returns in’s face.

  John Webster

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• Find me but guilty, sever head from body, We’ll part good friends.

  John Webster

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• Only the deep sense of some deathless shame.

  John Webster

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• A mere tale of a tub, my words are idle.

  John Webster

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• See, a good habit makes a child a man, Whereas a bad one makes a man a beast.

  John Webster

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• Lust carries her sharp whip At her own girdle.

  John Webster

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• ’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.

  John Webster

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John Webster (64)

Nationality:	British
Profession:	Playwright

About

John Webster was born in London, England. He was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. His life and career overlapped William Shakespeare's. He wrote other plays include: Northward Ho (with Thomas Dekker), The Devil's Law Case, Appius and Virginia, A Cure for a Cuckold (with William Rowley), and Anything for a Quiet Life (with Thomas Middleton).

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Today's Anniversary - 23rd April

Births

• 1960 - Valerie Bertinelli
• 1921 - Warren Spahn
• 1891 - Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev
• 1942 - Barry Hannah
• 1984 - Alexandra Kosteniuk

Deaths

• 1915 - Rupert Brooke
• 1971 - Cyril Falls
• 1988 - Michael Ramsey
• 1986 - Otto Preminger
• 1957 - Roy Campbell