“Who would have thought my shrivel'd heart Could have recovered greenness?”

— George Herbert, The Flower, The Temple (1633), ll. 8-9

About George Herbert

1593 – 1633

Welsh-born English poet and Anglican priest, compiler of the proverb collection 'Jacula Prudentum' (1651).

“Before you make a friend, eat a bushel of salt with him.”

“My house, my house, though thou art small, thou art to me the Escurial.”

“Laugh not too much; the witty man laughs least: for wit is news only to ignorance.”

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

“There is the love of knowing without the love of learning; the beclouding here leads to dissipation of mind.”

“In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.”

“When Life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind.”

“The heart of life is a sphere quiet and serene, and the star that shines therein is fixed for evermore.”

“The mind weighs and measures but it is the spirit that reaches the heart of life and embraces the secret.”