Her silent course advance

With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps

On her soft axle.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book viii. Line 163.

All impediments in fancy's course

Are motives of more fancy.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): All's Well that Ends Well. Act v. Sc. 3.

I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Lear. Act iii. Sc. 7.

Like to the Pontic sea,

Whose icy current and compulsive course

Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on

To the Propontic and the Hellespont,

Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,

Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,

Till that a capable and wide revenge

Swallow them up.

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

Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more!

Macbeth does murder sleep!" the innocent sleep,

Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,

The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,

Chief nourisher in life's feast.

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

Westward the course of empire takes its way;

The four first acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day:

Time's noblest offspring is the last.

Bishop Berkeley (1684-1753): On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America.

Is it so nominated in the bond?

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Merchant of Venice. Act iv. Sc. 1.

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.

The course of Nature is the art of God.

Edward Young (1684-1765): Night Thoughts. Night ix. Line 1267.

A man so various, that he seem'd to be

Not one, but all mankind's epitome;

Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,

Was everything by starts, and nothing long;

But in the course of one revolving moon

Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Absalom and Achitophel. Part i. Line 545.

For aught that I could ever read,

Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act i. Sc. 1.

That very law which moulds a tear

And bids it trickle from its source,—

That law preserves the earth a sphere,

And guides the planets in their course.

Samuel Rogers (1763-1855): On a Tear.

Time rolls his ceaseless course.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Lady of the Lake. Canto iii. Stanza 1.

Westward the course of empire takes its way;

The four first acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day:

Time's noblest offspring is the last.

Bishop Berkeley (1684-1753): On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America.

Let others hail the rising sun:

I bow to that whose course is run.

David Garrick (1716-1779): On the Death of Mr. Pelham.