John Wilmot — a remark

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“We have a pretty witty king, Whose word no man relies on; He never said a foolish thing, Nor ever did a wise one.”

Satirising the gap between clever speech and prudent action · Attributed remark, said to have been written on Charles II's bedchamber door

About John Wilmot

John Wilmot

1 April 1647–26 July 1680

John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, was born on 1 April 1647 at Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire and died on 26 July 1680 at Woodstock Park, aged only thirty-three. Few English poets have acquired a reputation so vivid, so unstable, and so inseparable from scandal. Rochester has been remembered as a court rake…

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Poems by John Wilmot

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