“Yet do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong,My love shall in my verse ever live young”

“O my love, my wife!Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breathHath had no power yet upon thy beauty.”

“Love is too young to know what conscience is,  Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?  Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,  Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:  For, thou betraying me, I do betray  My nobler part to my gross body's treason;  My soul doth tell my body that he may  Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason,  But rising at thy name doth point out thee,  As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,  He is contented thy poor drudge to be,  To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.    No want of conscience hold it that I call    Her 'love,' for whose dear love I rise and fall.”

“Is it thy will, thy image should keep openMy heavy eyelids to the weary night?Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from theeSo far from home into my deeds to pry,To find out shames and idle hours in me,The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:It is my love that keeps mine eye awake:Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,To play the watchman ever for thy sake:For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,From me far off, with others all too near.”

“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,  So do our minutes hasten to their end;  Each changing place with that which goes before,  In sequent toil all forwards do contend.  Nativity, once in the main of light,  Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,  Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,  And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.  Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth  And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,  Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,  And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:    And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand.    Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.”

“Love all, trust a few,Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemyRather in power than use; and keep thy friendUnder thy own life's key: be check'd for silence,But never tax'd for speech.”

“Cease thy counsel, for thy words fall into my ears as priceless as water into a sieve.”