There's many a knave concealed under a surplice.
Related quotes
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.
Earl of Kent in The Tragedy of King Lear
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity than straigthforward and simple integrity in another. A knave would rather quarrel with a brother knave than with a fool, but he would rather avoid a quarrel with one honest man than with both. He can combat a fool by management and address, and he can conquer a knave by temptations. But the honest man is neither to be bamboozled nor bribed.
quote by Charles Caleb Colton
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy! | In Romanian
The Distracted Puritan
Am I mad, O noble Festus,
When zeal and godly knowledge
Have put me in hope
To deal with the Pope
As well as the best in the college?
Boldly I preach, I hate a cross, hate a surplice,
Mitres, copes, and rochets!
Come hear me pray nine times a day,
And fill your heads with crotchets.
In the house of pure Emanuel
I had my education,
Where my friends surmise
I dazel'd my eyes
With the sight of revelation.
Boldly I preach, I hate a cross, hate a surplice,
Mitres, copes, and rochets!
Come hear me pray nine times a day,
And fill your heads with crotchets.
They hound me like a bedlam,
They lash'd my four poor quarters.
Whilst this I endure,
Faith makes me sure
To be one of Foxes martyrs.
Boldly I preach, I hate a cross, hate a surplice,
Mitres, copes, and rochets!
Come hear me pray nine times a day,
And fill your heads with crotchets.
These injuries I suffer
Through antichrist's perswasion.
Take off this chain!
Neither Rome nor Spain
Can resist my strong invasion.
Boldly I preach, I hate a cross, hate a surplice,
Mitres, copes, and rochets!
Come hear me pray nine times a day,
And fill your heads with crotchets.
Of the beast's ten horns (God bless us!)
I have knock'd off three already;
If they let me alone
I'll leave him none;
But they say I am too heady.
Boldly I preach, I hate a cross, hate a surplice,
Mitres, copes, and rochets!
Come hear me pray nine times a day,
And fill your heads with crotchets.
When I sack'd the seven-hill'd city
I met the great red dragon;
I kept him aloof
With the armour of proof,
Though here I have never a rag on.
Boldly I preach, I hate a cross, hate a surplice,
Mitres, copes, and rochets!
Come hear me pray nine times a day,
And fill your heads with crotchets.
With a fiery sword and target,
There fought I with this monster;
But the sons of pride
My zeal deride,
And all my deeds misconster.
Boldly I preach, I hate a cross, hate a surplice,
Mitres, copes, and rochets!
Come hear me pray nine times a day,
And fill your heads with crotchets.
I un-hors'd the Whore of Babel
With the lance of Inspiration;
I made her stink,
And spill the drink,
In her cup of abomination.
Boldly I preach, I hate a cross, hate a surplice,
Mitres, copes, and rochets!
Come hear me pray nine times a day,
And fill your heads with crotchets.
I have seen two in a vision
With a flying book between them.
I have been in despair
Five times in a year,
And been cur'd by reading Greenham.
Boldly I preach, I hate a cross, hate a surplice,
Mitres, copes, and rochets!
Come hear me pray nine times a day,
And fill your heads with crotchets.
I observ'd in Perkins' tables
The black line of damnation;
Those crooked veins
So stuck in my brains,
That I fear'd my reprobation.
Boldly I preach, I hate a cross, hate a surplice,
Mitres, copes, and rochets!
Come hear me pray nine times a day,
And fill your heads with crotchets.
In the holy tongue of Canaan
I plac'd my chiefest pleasure,
Till I prick'd my foot
With an Hebrew root
That I bled beyond all measure.
Boldly I preach, I hate a cross, hate a surplice,
Mitres, copes, and rochets!
Come hear me pray nine times a day,
And fill your heads with crotchets.
I appear'd before the Archbishop
And all the high Commission;
I gave him no grace,
But told him to his face
That he favour'd superstition.
Boldly I preach, hate a cross, hate a surplice
Mitres, copes, and rochets!
Come hear me pray nine times a day,
And fill your heads with crotchets.
poem by Richard Corbet
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Knave of Hearts
The Queen of Hearts she made some tarts all on a summer's day;
The Knave of Hearts he stole the tarts and took them clean away.
The King of Hearts called for the tarts and beat the Knave full sore
The Knave of Hearts brought back the tarts and
vowed he'd steal no more.
poem by Anonymous Olde English
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
No man is so much a fool as not to have wit enough sometimes to be a knave; nor any so cunning a knave as not to have the weakness sometimes to play the fool.
quote by George Savile
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
The heart never grows better by age I fear rather worse always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.
quote by Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.
quote by Lord Chesterfield
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
It is not the surplice that makes parson or clerk.
The pinafore of the child will be more than a match for the frock of the bishop and the surplice of the priest.
quote by James Martineau
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
On Bishop Atterbury's Burying The Duke Of Buckingham, 1721
I have no hopes, the Duke he says, and dies.
In sure and certain hopes - the prelate cries:
Of these two learned peers, I pr'ythee say, man,
Who is the lying knave, the priest or layman?
The Duke he stands an infidel confess'd:
He's our dear brother, quoth the lordly priest.
The Duke, though knave, still brother dear he cries
And who can say the reverend Prelate lies?
poem by Matthew Prior
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Against Unworthy Praise
O HEART, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What's not for their applause,
Being for a woman's sake.
Enough if the work has seemed,
So did she your strength renew,
A dream that a lion had dreamed
Till the wilderness cried aloud,
A secret between you two,
Between the proud and the proud.
What, still you would have their praise!
But here's a haughtier text,
The labyrinth of her days
That her own strangeness perplexed;
And how what her dreaming gave
Earned slander, ingratitude,
From self-same dolt and knave;
Aye, and worse wrong than these.
Yet she, singing upon her road,
Half lion, half child, is at peace.
poem by William Butler Yeats
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church --
I keep it, staying at Home --
With a Bobolink for a Chorister --
And an Orchard, for a Dome --
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice --
I just wear my Wings --
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton -- sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman --
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at least --
I'm going, all along.
poem by Emily Dickinson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.
It is a bad thing to be a knave, but worse to be known for one.
He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.
quote by George Berkeley
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!