Quintessence

Famous quotes containing the word quintessence:

“That strange premature genius Chatterton has couched in one line the quintessence of what Voltaire has said in many pages: “Reason, a thorn in Revelation’s side.””
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)

“Yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

“Study me then, you who shall lovers be
At the next world, that is, at the next spring:
For I am every dead thing,
In whom love wrought new alchemy.
For his art did express
A quintessence even from nothingness,
From dull privations, and lean emptiness:
He ruined me, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.”
—John Donne (1572–1631)