"And he repents in thorns that sleeps in beds of roses.""Anger may repast with thee for an hour, but not repose for a night; the continuance of anger is hatred, the continuance of hatred turns malice.""Be wisely worldly, but not worldly wise.""Beware of him that is slow to anger; for when it is long coming, it is the stronger when it comes, and the longer kept. Abused patience turns to fury.""Fear nothing but what thy industry may prevent; be confident of nothing but what fortune cannot defeat; it is no less folly to fear what is impossible to be avoided than to be secure when there is a possibility to be deprived.""Flatter not thyself in thy faith in God if thou hast not charity for thy neighbor.""Has fortune dealt you some bad cards. Then let wisdom make you a good gamester.""He that hath no cross deserves no crown.""Heaven finds an ear when sinners find a tongue.""I wish thee as much pleasure in the reading, as I had in the writing.""If thou desire the love of God and man, be humble, for the proud heart, as it loves none but itself, is beloved of none but itself. Humility enforces where neither virtue, nor strength, nor reason can prevail.""It is the lot of man but once to die.""Let the fear of danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger.""Luxury is an enticing pleasure, a bastard mirth, which hath honey in her mouth, gall in her heart, and a sting in her tail.""Meditation is the life of the soul: Action, the soul of meditation. and honor the reward of action.""My mind's my kingdom.""Necessity of action takes away the fear of the act, and makes bold resolution the favorite of fortune.""No cross no crown.""Put off thy cares with thy clothes; so shall thy rest strengthen thy labor, and so thy labor sweeten thy rest.""Temper your enjoyments with prudence, lest there be written on your heart that fearful word "satiety."""That friendship will not continue to the end which is begun for an end.""The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it.""The road to perseverance lies by doubt.""The sufficiency of merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient.""Wickedness is its own punishment.""Wisdom not only gets, but once got, retains."
Francis was born in Romford, Essex, (now London Borough of Havering), and baptised there on 8 May 1592. He traced his ancestry to a family settled in England before the Norman Conquest with a long history in royal service. His great-grandfather, George Quarles, was Auditor to Henry VIII, and his father, James Quarles, held several places under Elizabeth I and James I, for which he was rewarded with an estate called Stewards in Romford. His mother, Joan Dalton, was the daughter and heiress of Eldred Dalton of Mores Place, Hadham. There were eight children in the family; the eldest, Sir Robert Quarles, was knighted by James I in 1608, and another, John Quarles, also became a poet.
Francis was entered at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1608, and subsequently at Lincoln's Inn. He was made cupbearer to the Princess Elizabeth, in 1613, remaining abroad for some years; and before 1629 he was appointed secretary to Ussher, the primate of Ireland.
About 1633 he returned to England, and spent the next two years in the preparation of his Emblems. In 1639 he was made city chronologer, a post in which Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton had preceded him. At the outbreak of the Civil War he took the Royalist side, drawing up three pamphlets in 1644 in support of the king's cause. It is said that his house was searched and his papers destroyed by the Parliamentarians in consequence of these publications.
Quarles married Ursula Woodgate in 1618, by whom he had eighteen children. His son, John Quarles (1624—1665), was exiled to Flanders for his Royalist sympathies and was the author of Fons Lachrymarum (1648) and other poems. Quarles descendants, Charles Henry Langston and John Mercer Langston were American abolitionist whom pressed for greater freedom and suffrages among the African Americans in the 19th century.
The work by which Quarles is best known, the Emblems, was originally published in 1635, with grotesque illustrations engraved by William Marshall and others. The forty-five prints in the last three books are borrowed from the designs by Boetius ā Bolswert for the Pia Desideria (Antwerp, 1624) of Herman Hugo. Each "emblem" consists of a paraphrase from a passage of Scripture, expressed in ornate and metaphorical language, followed by passages from the Christian Fathers, and concluding with an epigram of four lines.
The Emblems was immensely popular with the common people, but the critics of the 17th and 18th centuries had no mercy on Quarles. Sir John Suckling in his Sessions of the Poets disrespectfully alluded to him as he "that makes God speak so big in's poetry." Pope in the Dunciad spoke of the Emblems, "Where the pictures for the page atone And Quarles is saved by beauties not his own."
A Feast for Wormes. Set forth in a Poeme of the History of Jonah (1620), which contains other scriptural paraphrases, besides the one that furnishes the title; Hadassa; or the History of Queene Ester (1621)
Job Militant, with Meditations Divine and Moral (1624)
Sions Elegies, wept by Jeremie the Prophet (1624)
Sions Sonets sung by Solomon the King (1624), a paraphrase of the Canticles
The Historic of Samson (1631)
Alphabet of Elegies upon ... Dr Aylmer (1625)
Argalus and Parthenia (1629), the subject of which is borrowed from Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia
four books of Divine Fancies digested into Epigrams, Meditations and Observations (1632)
a reissue of his scriptural paraphrases and the Alphabet of Elegies as Divine Poems (1633)
Hieroglyphikes of the Life of Man (1638)
Memorials Upon the Death of Sir Robert Quarles, Knight (1639), in honor of his brother
Enchyridion, containing Institutions Divine and Moral (1640—41), a collection of four "centuries" of miscellaneous aphorisms
Observations concerning Princes and States upon Peace and Warre (1642)
Boanerges and Barnabas--Wine and Oyle for ... afflicted Soules (1644—46), collection of miscellaneous reflections
three violent Royalist tracts (1644), The Loyal Convert, The Whipper Whipt, and The New Distemper, reissued in one volume in 1645 with the title of The Profest Royalist
his quarrel with the Times, and some elegies
Solomon's Recantation ... (1645), which contains a memoir by his widow
The Shepheards' Oracles (1646)
a second part of Boanerges and Barnabas (1646)
a broadside entitled A Direfull Anathema against Peace-haters (1647)
an interlude, The Virgin Widow (1649).
An edition of the Emblems (Edinburgh, 1857) was embellished with new illustrations by CH Bennett and WA Rogers These are reproduced in the complete edition (1874) of Quarles included in the "Chertsey Worthies Library" by Dr AB Grosart, who provides an introductory memoir and an appreciation of Quarles's value as a poet.
Karl Josef Höltgen, 'Francis Quarles and the Low Countries', in Bart Westerweel (Ed.), Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Field of the Emblem: Symbola et Emblemata Volume VII (Brill: Leiden, New York & Köln 1997), 123-148.
Wagner, Jean, Black poets of the United States: from Paul Laurence Dunbar to Langston Hughes, University of Illinois Press, 1973, ISBN 0252003411