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- Where is honour,
Innate and precept-strengthen'd, 'tis the rock
Of faith connubial: where it is not - where
Light thoughts are lurking, or the vanities
Of worldly pleasure rankle in the heart,
Or sensual throbs convulse it, well I know
'Twere hopeless for humanity to dream
Of honesty in such infected blood,
Although 'twere wed to him it covets most;
An incarnation of the poet's god
In all his marble-chiselled beauty, or
The demi-deity, Alcides, in
His majesty of superhuman manhood,
Would not suffice to bind where virtue is not;
It is consistency which forms and proves it;
Vice cannot fix and virtue cannot change,
The once fall'n woman must forever fall;
For vice must have variety, while virtue
Stands like the sun and all which rolls around
Drinks life, and light, and glory from her aspect.
Lord Byron: Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice, Act II, sc. I, lines 378-398 (en)
- What fear I then, rather what know to fear
Under this ignorance of good and evil,
Of God or death, of law or penalty?
Here grows the cure of all, this fruit divine,
Fair to the eye, inviting to the taste,
Of virtue to make wise; what hinders then
To reach, and feed at once both body and mind?"
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck'd, she eat.
...
In fruit she never tasted, whether true
Or fancied so, though expectation high
Of knowledge, nor was Godhead from her thought.
John Milton: Paradise Lost Book IX, lines 773–790 (en)
- Does spring hide its joy
When buds and blossoms grow?
Does the sower
Sow by night,
Or the ploughman in darkness plough?
Break this heavy chain
That does freeze my bones around
Selfish! Vain!
Eternal bane!
That free love with bondage bound.
William Blake: "Earth's Answer" lines 16-25 (en)
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