Andrew Marvell Quotes

• “Had we but World enough, and Time,
  This coyness Lady were no crime.
  We would sit down, and think which way
  To walk, and pass our long Loves Day.”

  Andrew Marvell

  63 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

• “To His Coy Mistress
  
  Had we but world enough and time,
  This coyness, lady, were no crime.
  We would sit down, and think which way
  To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
  Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
  Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
  Of Humber would complain. I would
  Love you ten years before the flood,
  And you should, if you please, refuse
  Till the conversion of the Jews.
  My vegetable love should grow
  Vaster than empires and more slow;
  An hundred years should go to praise
  Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
  Two hundred to adore each breast,
  But thirty thousand to the rest;
  An age at least to every part,
  And the last age should show your heart.
  For, lady, you deserve this state,
  Nor would I love at lower rate.
  
  But at my back I always hear
  Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
  And yonder all before us lie
  Deserts of vast eternity.
  Thy beauty shall no more be found;
  Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
  My echoing song; then worms shall try
  That long-preserved virginity,
  And your quaint honour turn to dust,
  And into ashes all my lust;
  The grave’s a fine and private place,
  But none, I think, do there embrace.
  
  Now therefore, while the youthful hue
  Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
  And while thy willing soul transpires
  At every pore with instant fires,
  Now let us sport us while we may,
  And now, like amorous birds of prey,
  Rather at once our time devour
  Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
  Let us roll all our strength and all
  Our sweetness up into one ball,
  And tear our pleasures with rough strife
  Thorough the iron gates of life:
  Thus, though we cannot make our sun
  Stand still, yet we will make him run.”

  Andrew Marvell

  53 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “Thus, though we cannot make our sun
  Stand still, yet we will make him run.”

  Andrew Marvell

  47 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “But at my back I always hear
  Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near”

  Andrew Marvell

  26 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “My love is of a birth as rare
  As 'tis, for object, strange and high;
  It was begotten by Despair
  Upon Impossibility.”

  Andrew Marvell

  25 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “The grave's a fine and private place,
  But none, I think, do there embrace.”

  Andrew Marvell

  19 Copy to clipboard Copy quote

• “Now therefore, while the youthful hue
  Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
  And while thy willing soul transpires
  At every pore with instant fires,
  Now let us sport us while we may,
  And now, like amorous birds of prey,
  Rather at once our time devour
  Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
  Let us roll all our strength and all
  Our sweetness up into one ball,
  And tear our pleasures with rough strife
  Thorough the iron gates of life:
  Thus, though we cannot make our sun
  Stand still, yet we will make him run.”

  Andrew Marvell

  19 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “Had we but world enough, and time”

  Andrew Marvell

  18 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “But at my back I always hear
  Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
  And yonder all before us lie
  Deserts of vast eternity.
  Thy beauty shall no more be found;
  Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
  My echoing song; then worms shall try
  That long-preserved virginity,
  And your quaint honour turn to dust,
  And into ashes all my lust;
  The grave’s a fine and private place,
  But none, I think, do there embrace.”

  Andrew Marvell

  16 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “Music, the mosaic of the air”

  Andrew Marvell

  13 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “As lines, so love's oblique, may well
  Themselves in every angle greet :
  But ours, so truly parallel,
  Though infinite, can never meet.”

  Andrew Marvell

  11 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “But at my back I always hear
  Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
  And yonder all before us lie
  Deserts of vast eternity.”

  Andrew Marvell

  10 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “But Fate does iron wedges drive,
  And always crowds itself betwixt.”

  Andrew Marvell

  9 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “Thus, though we cannot make our sun
  Stand still, yet we will make him run.”

  Andrew Marvell

  9 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “To wander solitary there:
  Two paradises ‘twere in one
  To live in paradise alone.”

  Andrew Marvell

  8 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “As lines, so loves oblique may well
  Themselves in every angle greet;
  But ours so truly parallel,
  Though infinite, can never meet.
  
  Therefore the love which us doth bind,
  But Fate so enviously debars,
  Is the conjunction of the mind,
  And opposition of the stars.”

  Andrew Marvell

  8 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “Now therefore, while the youthful hue
  Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
  And while thy willing soul transpires
  At every pore with instant fires,
  Now let us sport us while we may,
  And now, like amorous birds of prey,
  Rather at once our time devour
  Than languish in his slow-chapt power.”

  Andrew Marvell

  8 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “For Juliana comes, and she, what I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.”

  Andrew Marvell

  7 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “My vegetable love will grow
  Vaster than empires, and more slow.”

  Andrew Marvell

  5 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “Like the vain curlings of the watery maze,
  Which in smooth streams a sinking weight does raise,
  So Man, declining always, disappears
  In the weak circles of increasing years;
  And his short tumults of themselves compose,
  While flowing Time above his head does close.”

  Andrew Marvell

  5 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “What wondrous life in this I lead
  Ripe apples drop about my head”

  Andrew Marvell

  5 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “Ye glow-worms, whose officious flame
  To wand’ring mowers shows the way,
  That in the night have lost their aim,
  And after foolish fires do stray;
  
  Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
  Since Juliana here is come,
  For she my mind hath so displac’d
  That I shall never find my home.”

  Andrew Marvell

  5 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “And yet I quickly might arrive
  Where my extended soul is fixt,
  But Fate does iron wedges drive,
  And always crowds itself betwixt.”

  Andrew Marvell

  4 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “If these the Times, then this must be the Man.
  
  [Andrew Marvell on Oliver Cromwell]”

  Andrew Marvell

  2 Copy to clipboard Copy quote
• “The same arts that did gain
  A power, must it maintain.”

  Andrew Marvell

  1 Copy to clipboard Copy quote