Full fathom five thy father
lies; Of his bones are coral
made; Those are pearls that were his
eyes: Nothing of him that doth
fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something
rich and strange.
Our revels now are ended. These our
actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits,
and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like
the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d
towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples,
t
If there be no great love in the
beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better
acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion
to know one another: I hope, upon familiarity will grow
more contempt.
Thyself and thy belongings Are not
thine own so proper as to waste Thyself upon thy
virtues, they on thee. Heaven doth with us as we with
torches do, Not light them for themselves; for if our
virtues Did not go forth of us, ’t were all
No ceremony that to great ones
’longs, Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed
sword, The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s
robe, Become them with one half so good a grace As
mercy does.
Why, all the souls that were, were
forfeit once; And He that might the vantage best have
took Found out the remedy. How would you be, If
He, which is the top of judgment, should But judge
you as you are?
But man, proud man, Drest in a little
brief authority, Most ignorant of what he ’s most
assured, His glassy essence, like an angry
ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high
heaven As make the angels weep.
The sense of death is most in
apprehension; And the poor beetle, that we tread
upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as
great As when a giant dies.
Ay, but to die, and go we know not
where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This
sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and
the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to
reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
Take, O, take those lips
away, That so sweetly were
forsworn; And those eyes, the break of
day, Lights that do mislead the
morn: But my kisses bring again, bring
again; Seals of love, but sealed in vain, sealed in
va
Friendship is constant in all other
things Save in the office and affairs of
love: Therefore all hearts in love use their own
tongues; Let every eye negotiate for itself And
trust no agent.
Shall quips and sentences and these paper
bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his
humour? No, the world must be peopled. When I said I
would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till
I were married.
2 Watch. How if a’ will not
stand? Dogb. Why, then, take no note of him, but let
him go; and presently call the rest of the watch
together, and thank God you are rid of a knave.
For it so falls out That what we have
we prize not to the worth Whiles we enjoy it, but
being lack’d and lost, Why, then we rack the value;
then we find The virtue that possession would not
show us Whiles it was ours.
The idea of her life shall sweetly
creep Into his study of imagination, And every
lovely organ of her life, Shall come apparell’d in
more precious habit, More moving-delicate and full of
life Into the eye and prospect of his soul.
’T is all men’s office to speak
patience To those that wring under the load of
sorrow, But no man’s virtue nor sufficiency To be
so moral when he shall endure The like himself.
Small have continual plodders ever
won Save base authority from others’
books. These earthly godfathers of heaven’s
lights That give a name to every fixed
star Have no more profit of their shining
nights &n
Delivers in such apt and gracious
words That aged ears play truant at his tales, And
younger hearings are quite ravished; So sweet and
voluble is his discourse.
This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan
Cupid; Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded
arms, The anointed sovereign of sighs and
groans, Liege of all loiterers and malcontents.
From women’s eyes this doctrine I
derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean
fire; They are the books, the arts, the
academes, That show, contain, and nourish all the
world.
When daisies pied and violets
blue, And lady-smocks all
silver-white, And cuckoo-buds of yellow
hue Do paint the meadows with
delight, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks
married men.
Swift as a shadow, short as any
dream; Brief as the lightning in the collied
night, That in a spleen unfolds both heaven and
earth, And ere a man hath power to say,
“Behold!” The jaws of darkness do devour it up: So
quick bright t
And the imperial votaress passed
on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free. Yet mark’d I
where the bolt of Cupid fell: It fell upon a little
western flower, Before milk-white, now purple with
love’s wound, And maidens call it love-in-i
I know a bank where the wild thyme
blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet
grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious
woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with
eglantine.
The lunatic, the lover, and the
poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more
devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman:
the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a
brow of Egypt: The poet’s eye, in a fine f
Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of
nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons
are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff:
you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you
have them, they are not worth the search.
In my school-days, when I had lost one
shaft, I shot his fellow of the selfsame
flight The selfsame way, with more advised
watch, To find the other forth; and by adventuring
both, I oft found both.
I will buy with you, sell with you, talk
with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will
not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you.
What news on the Rialto?
The young gentleman, according to Fates
and Destinies and such odd sayings, the Sisters Three
and such branches of learning, is indeed deceased; or,
as you would say in plain terms, gone to heaven.
All things that are, Are with more
spirit chased than enjoy’d. How like a younker or a
prodigal The scarfed bark puts from her native
bay, Hugg’d and embraced by the strumpet wind! How
like the prodigal doth she return, With ov
The quality of mercy is not
strain’d, It droppeth as the gentle rain from
heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice
blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that
takes. ’T is mightiest in the mightiest: it
becomes The throned mo
How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this
bank! Here we will sit and let the sounds of
music Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the
night Become the touches of sweet harmony. Sit,
Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven Is thick inlaid
with
The man that hath no music in
himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet
sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and
spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as
night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no
such man be trusted.
Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which
like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a
precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt
from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in
the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good
i
O, good old man, how well in thee
appears The constant service of the antique
world, When service sweat for duty, not for
meed! Thou art not for the fashion of these
times, Where none will sweat but for promotion.
And then he drew a dial from his
poke, And looking on it with lack-lustre eye, Says
very wisely, “It is ten o’clock: Thus we may see,”
quoth he, “how the world wags.”
If ladies be but young and fair, They
have the gift to know it; and in his brain, Which is
as dry as the remainder biscuit After a voyage, he
hath strange places cramm’d With observation, the
which he vents In mangled forms.
Under the shade of melancholy
boughs, Lose and neglect the creeping hours of
time; If ever you have look’d on better days, If
ever been where bells have knoll’d to church, If ever
sat at any good man’s feast.
Time travels in divers paces with divers
persons. I ’ll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time
trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands
still withal.
It is a melancholy of mine own,
compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects,
and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in
which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous
sadness.
No sooner met but they looked; no sooner
looked but they loved; no sooner loved but they sighed;
no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason;
no sooner knew the reason but they sought the
remedy.
The Retort Courteous;… the Quip Modest;…
the Reply Churlish;… the Reproof Valiant;… the
Countercheck Quarrelsome;… the Lie with Circumstance;…
the Lie Direct.
As Stephen Sly and old John Naps of
Greece, And Peter Turph and Henry Pimpernell, And
twenty more such names and men as these Which never
were, nor no man ever saw.
If music be the food of love, play
on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The
appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again!
it had a dying fall: O, it came o’er my ear like the
sweet sound
’T is beauty truly blent, whose red and
white Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid
on: Lady, you are the cruell’st she alive If you
will lead these graces to the grave And leave the
world no copy.
Sir To. Dost thou think, because thou art
virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? Clo.
Yes, by Saint Anne, and ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth
too.
Let still the woman take An elder than
herself: so wears she to him, So sways she level in
her husband’s heart: For, boy, however we do praise
ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and
unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and
wo
The spinsters and the knitters in the
sun And the free maids that weave their thread with
bones Do use to chant it: it is silly sooth, And
dallies with the innocence of love, Like the old
age.
Duke. And what ’s her history? Vio. A
blank, my lord. She never told her love, But let
concealment, like a worm i’ the bud, Feed on her
damask cheek: she pined in thought, And with a green
and yellow melancholy She s
O Proserpina, For the flowers now,
that frighted thou let’st fall From Dis’s waggon!
daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and
take The winds of March with beauty; violets
dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eye
Thou slave, thou wretch, thou
coward! Thou little valiant, great in
villany! Thou ever strong upon the stronger
side! Thou Fortune’s champion that dost never
fight But when her humorous ladyship is by To
teach thee safety.
Grief fills the room up of my absent
child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with
me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his
words, Remembers me of all his gracious
parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his
form.
To gild refined gold, to paint the
lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth
the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with
taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to
garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
O, who can hold a fire in his hand By
thinking on the frosty Caucasus? Or cloy the hungry
edge of appetite By bare imagination of a
feast? Or wallow naked in December snow By
thinking on fantastic summer’s heat? O, no! the
apprehens
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred
isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of
Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This
fortress built by Nature for herself Against
infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of
men, this little
And nothing can we call our own but
death And that small model of the barren
earth Which serves as paste and cover to our
bones. For God’s sake, let us sit upon the
ground And tell sad stories of the death of
kings.
As in a theatre, the eyes of
men, After a well-graced actor leaves the
stage, Are idly bent on him that enters
next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious.
Fresh as a bridegroom; and his chin new
reap’d Showed like a stubble-land at
harvest-home; He was perfumed like a milliner, And
’twixt his finger and his thumb he held A
pouncet-box, which ever and anon He gave his nose and
took &
And as the soldiers bore dead bodies
by, He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly, To
bring a slovenly unhandsome corse Betwixt the wind
and his nobility.
And telling me, the sovereign’st thing on
earth Was parmaceti for an inward bruise; And that
it was great pity, so it was, This villanous
saltpetre should be digg’d Out of the bowels of the
harmless earth, Which many a good tall f
By heaven, methinks it were an easy
leap To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced
moon, Or dive into the bottom of the deep, Where
fathom-line could never touch the ground, And pluck
up drowned honour by the locks.
I have peppered two of them: two I am
sure I have paid, two rogues in buckram suits. I tell
thee what, Hal, if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face;
call me horse. Thou knowest my old ward: here I lay, and
thus I bore my point. Four rogues in buckram let
dr
All plumed like estridges that with the
wind Baited like eagles having lately
bathed; Glittering in golden coats, like
images; As full of spirit as the month of May, And
gorgeous as the sun at midsummer.
I saw young Harry, with his beaver
on, His cuisses on his thighs, gallantly
arm’d, Rise from the ground like feather’d
Mercury, And vaulted with such ease into his
seat As if an angel dropp’d down from the
clouds, To turn and
A mad fellow met me on the way and told
me I had unloaded all the gibbets and pressed the dead
bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I ’ll not
march through Coventry with them, that ’s flat: nay, and
the villains march wide betwixt the legs,
Honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if
honour prick me off when I come on,—how then? Can honour
set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief
of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then?
no. What is honour? a word. What is in that w
Lord, Lord, how this world is given to
lying! I grant you I was down and out of breath; and so
was he. But we rose both at an instant, and fought a
long hour by Shrewsbury clock.
Even such a man, so faint, so
spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so
woe-begone, Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of
night, And would have told him half his Troy was
burnt.
Yet the first bringer of unwelcome
news Hath but a losing office, and his
tongue Sounds ever after as a sullen
bell, Remember’d tolling a departing friend.
When we mean to build, We first survey
the plot, then draw the model; And when we see the
figure of the house, Then must we rate the cost of
the erection.
Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt
goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round
table, by a sea-coal fire, upon Wednesday in Wheeson
week.
O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature’s soft
nurse! how have I frighted thee, That thou no more
wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in
forgetfulness?
Accommodated; that is, when a man is, as
they say, accommodated; or when a man is, being, whereby
a’ may be thought to be accommodated,—which is an
excellent thing.
Like a man made after supper of a
cheese-paring: when a’ was naked, he was, for all the
world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically
carved upon it with a knife.
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.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends,
once more, Or close the wall up with our English
dead! In peace there ’s nothing so becomes a
man As modest stillness and humility; But when the
blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the
The hum of either army stilly
sounds, That the fixed sentinels almost
receive The secret whispers of each other’s
watch; Fire answers fire, and through their paly
flames Each battle sees the other’s umbered
face; Steed threatens s
This day is called the feast of
Crispian: He that outlives this day and comes safe
home, Will stand a tip-toe when this day is
named, And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
Between two hawks, which flies the higher
pitch; Between two dogs, which hath the deeper
mouth; Between two blades, which bears the better
temper; Between two horses, which doth bear him
best; Between two girls, which hath the merriest
eye,.
What stronger breastplate than a heart
untainted! Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel
just, And he but naked, though locked up in
steel, Whose conscience with injustice is
corrupted.
There shall be in England seven halfpenny
loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have
ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small
beer.
Is not this a lamentable thing, that of
the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment?
that parchment, being scribbled o’er, should undo a
man?
Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the
youth of the realm in erecting a grammar-school; and
whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but
the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be
used, and, contrary to the king, his crown and
Now is the winter of our
discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of
York, And all the clouds that loured upon our
house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Now
are our brows bound with victorious wreaths, Our
bruised arms hung up for
O, I have passed a miserable night, So
full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams, That, as I am
a Christian faithful man, I would not spend another
such a night, Though ’t were to buy a world of happy
days.
Lord, Lord! methought, what pain it was
to drown! What dreadful noise of waters in mine
ears! What ugly sights of death within mine
eyes! Methought I saw a thousand fearful
wrecks, Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed
upon, Wedges of gold, g
I have touched the highest point of all
my greatness; And from that full meridian of my
glory I haste now to my setting: I shall fall Like
a bright exhalation in the evening, And no man see me
more.
Farewell! a long farewell, to all my
greatness! This is the state of man: to-day he puts
forth The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow
blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon
him; The third day comes a frost, a killing
frost, And
Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of
glory, And sounded all the depths and shoals of
honour, Found thee a way, out of his wreck, to rise
in; A sure and safe one, though thy master missed
it.
Love thyself last: cherish those hearts
that hate thee; Corruption wins not more than
honesty. Still in thy right hand carry gentle
peace, To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear
not: Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy
country&#
He was a scholar, and a ripe and good
one; Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and
persuading; Lofty and sour to them that loved him
not, But to those men that sought him sweet as
summer.
After my death I wish no other
herald, No other speaker of my living actions, To
keep mine honour from corruption, But such an honest
chronicler as Griffith.
All lovers swear more performance than
they are able, and yet reserve an ability that they
never perform; vowing more than the perfection of ten,
and discharging less than the tenth part of one.
Had I a dozen sons, each in my love alike
and none less dear than thine and my good Marcius, I had
rather eleven die nobly for their country than one
voluptuously surfeit out of action.
She is a woman, therefore may be
woo’d; She is a woman, therefore may be won; She
is Lavinia, therefore must be loved. What, man! more
water glideth by the mill Than wots the miller
of;
O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with
you! She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes In
shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the
fore-finger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of
little atomies Athwart men’s noses as they lie
Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s
neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign
throats, Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish
blades, Of healths five-fathom deep; and then
anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and
wakes, And be
Rom. Lady, by yonder blessed moon I
swear, That tips with silver all these fruit-tree
tops— Jul. O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant
moon, That monthly changes in her circled
orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise varia
O, mickle is the powerful grace that
lies In herbs, plants, stones, and their true
qualities: For nought so vile that on the earth doth
live But to the earth some special good doth
give, Nor aught so good but strain’d from that fair
use
When he shall die, Take him and cut
him out in little stars, And he will make the face of
heaven so fine That all the world will be in love
with night, And pay no worship to the garish
sun.
They may seize On the white wonder of
dear Juliet’s hand And steal immortal blessing from
her lips, Who, even in pure and vestal
modesty, Still blush, as thinking their own kisses
sin.
I ’ll example you with thievery: The
sun ’s a thief, and with his great attraction Robs
the vast sea; the moon ’s an arrant thief, And her
pale fire she snatches from the sun; The sea ’s a
thief, whose liquid surge resolves
Well, honour is the subject of my
story. I cannot tell what you and other men Think
of this life; but, for my single self, I had as lief
not be as live to be In awe of such a thing as I
myself.
“Darest thou, Cassius, now Leap in
with me into this angry flood, And swim to yonder
point?” Upon the word, Accoutred as I was, I plunged
in And bade him follow.
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow
world Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under
his huge legs and peep about To find ourselves
dishonourable graves. Men at some time are masters of
their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in
our
Conjure with ’em,— Brutus will start a
spirit as soon as Cæsar. Now, in the names of all the
gods at once, Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar
feed, That he is grown so great? Age, thou art
shamed! Rome, thou hast lost th
Let me have men about me that are
fat, Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o’
nights: Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry
look; He thinks too much: such men are
dangerous.
Between the acting of a dreadful
thing And the first motion, all the interim
is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The
Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in
council; and the state of man, Like to a little
kingdom, suffers then
Boy! Lucius! Fast asleep? It is no
matter; Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber: Thou
hast no figures nor no fantasies, Which busy care
draws in the brains of men; Therefore thou sleep’st
so sound.
Cowards die many times before their
deaths; The valiant never taste of death but
once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It
seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing
that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will
co
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of
earth, That I am meek and gentle with these
butchers! Thou art the ruins of the noblest
man That ever lived in the tide of times.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your
ears; I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him. The
evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft
interred with their bones.
Should I have answer’d Caius Cassius
so? When Marcus Brutus grows so covetous, To lock
such rascal counters from his friends, Be ready,
gods, with all your thunderbolts: Dash him to
pieces!
There is a tide in the affairs of
men Which taken at the flood, leads on to
fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is
bound in shallows and in miseries.
Nothing in his life Became him like
the leaving it; he died As one that had been studied
in his death To throw away the dearest thing he
owed, As ’t were a careless trifle.
Your face, my thane, is as a book where
men May read strange matters. To beguile the
time, Look like the time; bear welcome in your
eye, Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent
flower, But be the serpent under ’t.
The heaven’s breath Smells wooingly
here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of
vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and
procreant cradle: Where they most breed and haunt, I
have observed, The air is delicate.
If it were done when ’t is done, then ’t
were well It were done quickly: if the
assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and
catch With his surcease success; that but this
blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But
Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his
faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great
office, that his virtues Will plead like angels,
trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his
taking-off; And pity, like a naked new-born
babe,
Is this a dagger which I see before
me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch
thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee
still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To
feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the
mind, a fal
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, grea
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this
blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will
rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making
the green one red.
Confusion now hath made his
masterpiece! Most sacrilegious murder hath broke
ope The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole
thence The life o’ the building!
Upon my head they placed a fruitless
crown, And put a barren sceptre in my
gripe, Thence to be wrench’d with an unlineal
hand, No son of mine succeeding.
Better be with the dead, Whom we, to
gain our peace, have sent to peace, Than on the
torture of the mind to lie In restless ecstasy.
Duncan is in his grave; After life’s fitful fever he
sleeps well: Treason has done his worst; nor
stee
The time has been, That when the
brains were out the man would die, And there an end;
but now they rise again, With twenty mortal murders
on their crowns, And push us from our stools.
What man dare, I dare: Approach thou
like the rugged Russian bear, The arm’d rhinoceros,
or the Hyrcan tiger,— Take any shape but that, and my
firm nerves Shall never tremble.
In the most high and palmy state of
Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The
graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead Did
squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.
It faded on the crowing of the
cock. Some say that ever ’gainst that season
comes Wherein our Saviour’s birth is
celebrated, The bird of dawning singeth all night
long: And then, they say, no spirit dares stir
O, that this too too solid flesh would
melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that
the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst
self-slaughter! O God! God! How weary, stale, flat,
and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses
Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral
baked meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage
tables. Would I had met my dearest foe in
heaven Or ever I had seen that day.
The chariest maid is prodigal
enough, If she unmask her beauty to the
moon: Virtue itself ’scapes not calumnious
strokes: The canker galls the infants of the
spring Too oft before their buttons be
disclosed, And in the morn and liquid
Do not, as some ungracious pastors
do, Show me the steep and thorny way to
heaven; Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless
libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance
treads, And recks not his own rede.
Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but
being in, Bear ’t that the opposed may beware of
thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy
voice; Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy
judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can
buy, Bu
Neither a borrower nor a lender
be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And
borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above
all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow,
as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to
a
Angels and ministers of grace, defend
us! Be thou a spirit of health or goblin
damn’d, Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts
from hell, Be thy intents wicked or
charitable, Thou comest in such a questionable
shape That I will spea
Cut off even in the blossoms of my
sin, Unhousell’d, disappointed, unaneled, No
reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my
imperfections on my head.
O villain, villain, smiling, damned
villain! My tables,—meet it is I set it down, That
one may smile, and smile, and be a villain: At least
I ’m sure it may be so in Denmark.
Ham. There ’s ne’er a villain dwelling in
all Denmark But he ’s an arrant knave. Hor. There
needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave To tell
us this.
This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me
a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the
air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this
majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it
appears no other thing to me than a foul and pesti
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you
are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless
storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed
sides, Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend
you From seasons such as these?
Half way down Hangs one that gathers
samphire, dreadful trade! Methinks he seems no bigger
than his head: The fishermen that walk upon the
beach Appear like mice.
A man may see how this world goes with no
eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails
upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change
places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is
the thief?
Most potent, grave, and reverend
signiors, My very noble and approv’d good
masters, That I have ta’en away this old man’s
daughter, It is most true; true, I have married
her: The very head and front of my offending Hath
this
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
And often did beguile her of her
tears, When I did speak of some distressful
stroke That my youth suffer’d. My story being
done, She gave me for my pains a world of
sighs; She swore, in faith, ’t was strange, ’t was
passing stra
Good name in man and woman, dear my
lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls: Who
steals my purse steals trash; ’t is something,
nothing; ’T was mine, ’t is his, and has been slave
to thousands; But he that filches from me my
O curse of marriage, That we can call
these delicate creatures ours, And not their
appetites! I had rather be a toad, And live upon the
vapour of a dungeon, Than keep a corner in the thing
I love For others’ uses.
O, now, for ever Farewell the tranquil
mind! farewell content! Farewell the plumed troop and
the big wars That make ambition virtue! O,
farewell! Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill
trump, The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing
f
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 t
Put out the light, and then put out the
light: If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I
can again thy former light restore Should I repent
me; but once put out thy light, Thou cunning’st
pattern of excelling nature, I know not where
I have done the state some service, and
they know ’t. No more of that. I pray you, in your
letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds
relate, Speak of me as I am; nothing
extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice. Then, must
you speak O
The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d
throne, Burn’d on the water; the poop was beaten
gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The
winds were love-sick with them; the oars were
silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke,
a
Who does i’ the wars more than his
captain can Becomes his captain’s captain; and
ambition, The soldier’s virtue, rather makes choice
of loss, Than gain which darkens him.
Sometime we see a cloud that ’s
dragonish; A vapour sometime like a bear or
lion, A tower’d citadel, a pendent rock, A forked
mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon
’t.
No, ’t is slander, Whose edge is
sharper than the sword, whose tongue Outvenoms all
the worms of Nile, whose breath Rides on the posting
winds, and doth belie All corners of the world.
When to the sessions of sweet silent
thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I
sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old
woes new wail my dear time’s waste.
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor
boundless sea, But sad mortality o’ersways their
power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a
plea, Whose action is no stronger than a
flower?
That time of year thou may’st in me
behold, When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do
hang Upon those boughs which shake against the
cold,— Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds
sang.
Your monument shall be my gentle
verse, Which eyes not yet created shall
o’er-read, And tongues to be your being shall
rehearse When all the breathers of this world are
dead; You still shall live—such virtue hath my
pen— Wher
Do not drop in for an after-loss. Ah,
do not, when my heart hath ’scap’d this sorrow, Come
in the rearward of a conquer’d woe; Give not a windy
night a rainy morrow, To linger out a purpos’d
overthrow.
’T is better to be vile than vile
esteem’d, When not to be receives reproach of
being; And the just pleasure lost which is so
deem’d, Not by our feeling, but by others’
seeing.
So on the tip of his subduing
tongue All kinds of arguments and questions
deep, All replication prompt, and reason
strong, For his advantage still did wake and
sleep. To make the weeper laugh, the laugher
weep, He had the dialect and differ