Works

God will have all, or none; serve Him, or fall
Down before Baal, Bel, or Belial:
Either be hot or cold: God doth despise,
Abhor, and spew out all neutralities.

No man comes late unto that place from whence
Never man yet had a regredience.

Nothing hard or harsh can prove
Unto those that truly love.

To get thine ends, lay bashfulness aside;
Who fears to ask doth teach to be deny'd.

Good and great God! how should I fear
To come to Thee if Christ not there!
Could I but think He would not be
Present to plead my cause for me,
To hell I'd rather run than I...

When fear admits no hope of safety, then
Necessity makes dastards valiant men.

Reproach we may the living, not the dead:
'Tis cowardice to bite the buried.

Night makes no difference 'twixt the priest and clerk;
Joan as my lady is as good i' th' dark.

God scourgeth some severely, some He spares;
But all in smart have less or greater shares.

No fault in women, to refuse
The offer which they most would chuse.
No fault: in women, to confess
How tedious they are in their dress;
No fault in women, to lay on
The tincture of vermilion;...

What I fancy I approve,
No dislike there is in love.
Be my mistress short or tall,
And distorted therewithal:
Be she likewise one of those
That an acre hath of nose:
Be her forehead and her eyes...

Bar close as you can, and bolt fast too your door,
To keep out the letcher, and keep in the whore;
Yet quickly you'll see by the turn of a pin,
The whore to come out, or the letcher come in.

I do love I know not what,
Sometimes this and sometimes that;
All conditions I aim at.

But, as luckless, I have yet
Many shrewd disasters met
To gain her whom I would get.
...

No man such rare parts hath, that he can swim,
If favour or occasion help not him.

Out of the world he must, who once comes in.
No man exempted is from death, or sin.

Happy's that man to whom God gives
A stock of goods, whereby he lives
Near to the wishes of his heart:
No man is blest through every part.

If little labour, little are our gains;
Man's fortunes are according to his pains.

Now, if you love me, tell me,
For as I will not sell ye,
So not one cross to buy thee
I'll give, if thou deny me.

The Jews their beds and offices of ease,
Placed north and south for these clean purposes;
That man's uncomely froth might not molest
God's ways and walks, which lie still east and west.

Thou sail'st with others in this Argus here;
Nor wreck or bulging thou hast cause to fear;
But trust to this, my noble passenger;
Who swims with virtue, he shall still be sure...