Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evilönot the strength to choose between the two.

-Cheever,JohnWilliam
  Collected in The Journals,'The Late Forties and Fifties'.

   I remember my youth and the feeling that it will never come back any moreöthe feeling that I could last for ever, outlast thesea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effortöto death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expiresöand expires, too soon, too soonöbefore life itself.

-Connor, Sir William Neil pseudonym Cassandra
  'Youth'.

It is only when you get to see and realize what India isöthat she is the strength and the greatness of Englandöthat you feel that every nerve a man may strain, every energy he may put forward, cannot be devoted to a nobler purpose than keeping tight the cords that hold India to ourselves.

-Curzon (of Kedleston), Lord George Nathaniel
  Speech at Southport,15 May.

Strength and beautyare the blessings of youth; temperance, however, is the flower of old age.

-Democritus
Fragment quoted in H Diels and W Kranz (eds) Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, vol.2 (1952), no.294.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  'The Love Song of  J  Alfred Prufrock' (first published in Poetry magazine, collected in Prufrock and Other Observations, 1917).

Yo soy un artista. El placer de la carne le resta fuerzas a mi vocacio¤ n  picto¤  rica, prefiero sentir que los jugos de mi sexo fluyen hacia un cuadro, lo irrigan, lo fertilizan, lo realzan; ca¤  strame el goce de la carne, satisfa¤  ceme el goce del arte. Iamanartist.The pleasure ofthefleshrobsstrengthfrom myartistic vocation, I prefer to feel my sexual juices flow toward a painting, wash over it, fertilize it, realize it; the delights of the flesh castrate me, the delights of art satisfy me.

-Fuentes, Carlos
  Terra nostra,'El cronista'.

Eighteen is a good time for suffering.One has all the necessary strength, and no defences.

-Golding, Sir William (Gerald)
  The Pyramid.

Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.

-Goldsmith, Oliver
  The Vicar of  Wakefield, ch.13.

Is there no way to beget In my limbs their former heat? Aeson had (as Poets fain) Baths that made him young again: Find that Medicine (if you can) For your dry-decrepit man: Who would but fain his strength renew, Were it but to pleasure you.

-Herrick, Robert
  'To His Mistress'.

Let others drink thee freely; and desire Thee and their lips espous'd; while I admire, And love thee; but not taste thee. Let my Muse Fail of thy former helps; and only use Her inadult'rate strength: what's done by me Hereafter, shall smell of the lamp, not thee.

-Herrick, Robert
  'His Fare-well to Sack'.

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there isno place for industry; becausethe fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

-Hobbes,Thomas
Leviathan, pt.1, ch.13.

A Free Man is he, that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to.

-Hobbes,Thomas
Leviathan, pt.2, ch.21.

I look forward to†a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint; its wealth with our wisdom; its power with our purpose.

-Kennedy,John F(itzgerald)
  Last major public speech,  Amherst College, 26 Oct.

   But surely Adam cannot be excused; Her fault though great, yet he was most to blame; What weakness offered, strength might have refused, Being lord of all, the greater was the shame.

-Lanyer, Aemilia
Salve Deus Ex Judaeorum,'Eve's  Apology in Defense of Women'.

We were a self-centred army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man's creeds, a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all our strength, a hope so transcendent that ourearlier ambitions faded in its glare.

-Arabia
  Seven Pillars of  Wisdom, ch.1.

We hardly know any instance of the strength and weakness of humannaturesostriking, and sogrotesque, as the character of this haughty, vigilant, resolute, sagacious blue-stockingöhalf Mithridates and half Trissotin, bearing up against a world in arms, with an ounce of poison inone pocket, and a quire of bad verses in the other.

-1st Baron
  Of Frederick the Great. Historical Essays.'Frederic the Great', in the Edinburgh Magazine,  Apr.

Thereisnostrengthinunbelief.Eventheunbeliefof what is false is no source of might. It is the truth shining from behind that gives the strength to disbelieve.

-MacDonald, George
The Marquis of Lossie (published1906).

Let us roll all our strength, and all Our sweetness, up into one ball: And tear our pleasures with rough strife, Through the iron gates of life. Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

-Marvell, Andrew
c.1650^1652  'To His Coy Mistress' (published1681), closing lines.

And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, soTruth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?

-Milton,John
  Areopagitica: a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

His trust was with the eternal to be deemed Equal in strength, and rather than be less Cared not to be at all; with that care lost Went all his fear.

-Milton,John
  Of Moloch. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.46^9.