The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

‘The Garden of Cyrus’ (1658) ch. 4
Flat and flexible truths are beat out by every hammer; but Vulcan and his whole forge sweat to
work out Achilles his armour.
‘The Garden of Cyrus’ (1658) ch. 5
The quincunx of heaven runs low, and ’tis time to close the five ports of knowledge.
‘The Garden of Cyrus’ (1658) ch. 5
All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the
ordainer of order and mystical mathematics of the city of heaven.
‘The Garden of Cyrus’ (1658) ch. 5
Nor will the sweetest delight of gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dullness of
that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the bed of Cleopatra, can hardly
with any delight raise up the ghost of a rose.
‘The Garden of Cyrus’ (1658) ch. 5
Though Somnus in Homer be sent to rouse up Agamemnon, I find no such effects in these
drowsy approaches of sleep. To keep our eyes open longer were but to act our Antipodes. The
huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia. But who can be
drowsy at that hour which freed us from everlasting sleep? or have slumbering thoughts at that
time, when sleep itself must end, and as some conjecture all shall awake again?
‘The Garden of Cyrus’ (1658) ch. 5
Old mortality, the ruins of forgotten times.
‘Hydriotaphia’ (Urn Burial, 1658) Epistle Dedicatory
With rich flames and hired tears they solemnized their obsequies.
‘Hydriotaphia’ (Urn Burial, 1658) ch. 3
Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones and clouts
make martyrs.
‘Hydriotaphia’ (Urn Burial, 1658) ch. 4
Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a
martyrdom to live.
‘Hydriotaphia’ (Urn Burial, 1658) ch. 4
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
‘Hydriotaphia’ (Urn Burial, 1658) ch. 5
But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration.
‘Hydriotaphia’ (Urn Burial, 1658) ch. 5
Generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks.
‘Hydriotaphia’ (Urn Burial, 1658) ch. 5
To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history.
‘Hydriotaphia’ (Urn Burial, 1658) ch. 5
The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men
without distinction to merit perpetuity.
‘Hydriotaphia’ (Urn Burial, 1658) ch. 5