George Herbert
George Herbert
George Herbertwas a Welsh poet, orator and Anglican priest. Herbert's poetry is associated with the writings of the metaphysical poets, and he is recognized as "a pivotal figure: enormously popular, deeply and broadly influential, and arguably the most skilful and important British devotional lyricist."...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth3 April 1593
numbers good-company company
Keep good company, and you shall be of the number.
abundance enough stewards
If I have enough for myself and family, I am steward only for myself; if I have more, I am but a steward of that abundance for others.
shoes knows
Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches.
honesty eggs stealing
He that steals an egg will steal an ox.
hands gold lost
Who shuts his hand has lost his gold, Who opens it hath it twice told.
easter jew
The Jews spend at Easter.
light long burden
Light burdens, long borne, grow heavy.
black pennies
The smith and his penny both are black.
skins dies
The wolf must die in his own skin.
barefoot
Better a barefoot than none.
men proportion limbs
Man is all symmetry, Full of proportions, one limb to another.
law rooms action
A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine; Who sweeps a room as forThy laws Makes it and th'action fine.
pieces fit
A piece of a Churchyard fits everybody.
mind done may
Let thy mind still be bent, still plotting, where, And when, and how thy business may be done. Slackness breeds worms; but the sure traveller, Though he alights sometimes still goeth on.