Plain living and high thinking are no more.

The homely beauty of the good old cause

Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,

And pure religion breathing household laws.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): O Friend! I know not which way I must look.

Find out the cause of this effect,

Or rather say, the cause of this defect,

For this effect defective comes by cause.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act ii. Sc. 2.

Alas! how light a cause may move

Dissension between hearts that love!

Hearts that the world in vain had tried,

And sorrow but more closely tied;

That stood the storm when waves were rough,

Yet in a sunny hour fall off,

Like ships that have gone down at sea

When heaven was all tranquillity.

Thomas Moore (1779-1852): Lalla Rookh. The Light of the Harem.

A brave man struggling in the storms of fate,

And greatly falling with a falling state.

While Cato gives his little senate laws,

What bosom beats not in his country's cause?

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Prologue to Mr. Addison's Cato.

Our cause is just, our union is perfect.

John Dickinson (1732-1808): Declaration on taking up Arms in 1775.

Her father loved me; oft invited me;

Still question'd me the story of my life,

From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,

That I have passed.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days,

To the very moment that he bade me tell it:

Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents by flood and field,

Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,

Of being taken by the insolent foe

And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence

And portance in my travels' history;

Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,

Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven,

It was my hint to speak,—such was the process;

And of the Cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear

Would Desdemona seriously incline.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act i. Sc. 3.

Presume to lay their hand upon the ark

Of her magnificent and awful cause.

William Cowper (1731-1800): The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece. Line 231.

Excess of wealth is cause of covetousness.

Christopher Marlowe (1565-1593): The Jew of Malta. Act i.

Shall I ask the brave soldier who fights by my side

In the cause of mankind, if our creeds agree?

Thomas Moore (1779-1852): Come, send round the Wine.

Turn him to any cause of policy,

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,

Familiar as his garter: that when he speaks,

The air, a chartered libertine, is still.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry V. Act i. Sc. 1.

Find out the cause of this effect,

Or rather say, the cause of this defect,

For this effect defective comes by cause.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act ii. Sc. 2.

Find out the cause of this effect,

Or rather say, the cause of this defect,

For this effect defective comes by cause.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act ii. Sc. 2.

Report me and my cause aright.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act v. Sc. 2.

Their cause I plead,—plead it in heart and mind;

A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.

David Garrick (1716-1779): Prologue on Quitting the Stage in 1776.

Thou great First Cause, least understood.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Universal Prayer. Stanza 2.

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!

Then conquer we must when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto, "In God is our trust!"

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Henry Clay (1777-1852): The Star-Spangled Banner.

They never fail who die

In a great cause.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Marino Faliero. Act ii. Sc. 2.