And the creature run from the cur?
There thou might'st behold the great image of authority
a dog's obeyed in office.
King Lear -- IV. 6.
Could great men thunder
As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,
For every pelting, petty officer
Would use his heaven for thunder: nothing but thunder--
Merciful heaven!
Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,
Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,
Than the soft myrtle!--O, 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.
Measure for Measure -- II. 2.
BEAUTY.
The hand, that hath made you fair, hath made you good: the
goodness, that is cheap in beauty, makes beauty brief in goodness;
but grace, being the soul of your complexion, should keep the body
of it ever fair.
Measure for Measure -- III. 1.
BLESSINGS UNDERVALUED.
It so falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth,
Whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost,
Why, then we rack the value; then we find
The virtue, that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours.
Much Ado About Nothing -- IV. 1.
BRAGGARTS.
It will come to pass,
That every braggart shall be found an ass.
All's Well that Ends Well -- IV. 3.
They that have the voice of lions, and the act of bares,
are they not monsters?
Troilus and Cressida -- III. 2.
CALUMNY.
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,
thou shalt not escape calumny.
Hamlet -- III. 1.
No might nor greatness in mortality
Can censure 'scape; back-wounding calumny
The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong,
Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?
Measure for Measure -- III. 2.
CEREMONY.
Ceremony
Was but devised at first, to set a gloss
On faint deeds, hollow welcomes.
Recanting goodness, sorry ere 'tis shown;
But where there is true friendship, there needs none.
Timon of Athens -- I. 2.
COMFORT.
Men
Can counsel, and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air, and agony with words:
No, no; 'tis 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.
Much Ado About Nothing -- V. 1.
Well, every one can master a grief, but he that has it.
Idem -- II.
COMPARISON.
When the moon shone, we did not see the candle.
So doth the greater glory dim the less;
A substitute shines brightly as a king,
Until a king be by; and then his state
Empties itself, as does an inland brook
Into the main of waters.
Merchant of Venice -- V. 1.
CONSCIENCE.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Hamlet -- III. 1.
CONTENT.
My crown is in my heart, not on my head;
Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,
Nor to be seen; my crown is called content ;
A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy.
King Henry VI., Part 3d - III. 1.
CONTENTION.
How, in one house,
Should many people, under two commands,
Hold amity?
King Lear -- II. 4.
When two authorities are set up,
Neither supreme, how soon confusion
May enter twixt the gap of both, and take
The one by the other.
Coriolanus -- III. 1.
CONTENTMENT.
'Tis better to be lowly born,
And range with humble livers in content,
Than to be perked up in a glistering grief,
And wear a golden sorrow.
King Henry VIII. -- II. 3.
COWARDS.
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Julius Caesar -- II. 2.
CUSTOM.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habit's devil, is angel yet in this:
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock, or livery,
That aptly is put on: Refrain to-night:
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy:
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either curb the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency.
Hamlet -- III. 4.
A custom
More honored in the breach, then the observance.
Idem -- I. 4.
DEATH.
Kings, and mightiest potentates, must die;
For that's the end of human misery.
King Henry VI., Part 1st -- III. 2.
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 come.
Julius Caesar -- II. 2.
The dread of something after death,
Makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others we know not of.
Hamlet -- III. 1.
The sense of death is most in apprehension.
Measure for Measure -- III. 1.
By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death
Will seize the doctor too.
Cymbeline -- V. 5.
DECEPTION.
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul, producing holy witness,
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek;
A goodly apple rotten at the heart;
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
Merchant of Venice -- I. 3.
DEEDS.
Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them to men's eyes.
Hamlet -- I. 2.
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds,
Makes deeds ill done!
King John -- IV. 2.
DELAY.
That we would do,
We should do when we would; for this would changes,
And hath abatements and delays as many,
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this should is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing.
Hamlet -- IV. 7.
DELUSION.
For love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul;
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place;
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bsp; Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.
Hamlet -- III. 4.
DISCRETION.
Let's teach ourselves that honorable stop,
Not to outsport discretion.
Othello -- II. 3.
DOUBTS AND FEARS.
I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.
Macbeth -- III. 4.
DRUNKENNESS.
Boundless intemperance.
In nature is a tyranny; it hath been
Th' untimely emptying of the happy throne,
And fall of many kings.
Measure for Measure -- I. 3.
DUTY OWING TO OURSELVES AND OTHERS.
Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy
Rather in power, than use; and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key; be checked for silence,
But never taxed for speech.
All's Well that Ends Well -- I. 1.
EQUIVOCATION.
But yet
I do not like but yet, it does allay
The good precedence; fye upon but yet:
But yet is as a gailer to bring forth
Some monstrous malefactor.
Antony and Cleopatra -- II. 5.
EXCESS.
A surfeit of the sweetest things
The deepest loathing to the stomach brings.
Midsummer Night's Dream -- II. 3.
Every inordinate cup is unblessed,
and the ingredient is a devil.
Othello -- II. 3.
FALSEHOOD.
Falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent,
Three things that women hold in hate.
Two Gentlemen of Verona -- III. 2.
FEAR.
Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds
Where it should guard.
King Henry VI., Part 2d -- V. 2.
Fear, and be slain; no worse can come, to fight:
And fight and die, is death destroying death;
Where fearing dying, pays death servile breath.
King Richard II. -- III. 2.
FEASTS.
Small cheer, and great welcome, makes a merry feast.
Comedy of Errors -- III. 1.
FILIAL INGRATITUDE.
Ingratitude! Thou marble-hearted fiend,
More hideous, when thou showest thee in a child,
Than the sea-monster.
King Lear -- I. 4.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child
Idem -- I. 4.
FORETHOUGHT.
Determine on some course,
More than a wild exposure to each cause
That starts i' the way before thee.
Coriolanus -- IV. 1.
FORTITUDE.
Yield not thy neck
To fortune's yoke, but let thy dauntless mind
Still ride in triumph over all mischance.
King Henry VI., Part 3d -- III. 3.
FORTUNE.
When fortune means to men most good,
She looks upon them with a threatening eye.
King John -- III. 4.
GREATNESS.
Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: To-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;
The third day, comes a frost, a killing frost;
And,--when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is ripening,--nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do.
King Henry VIII. -- III. 2.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness,
and some have greatness thrust upon them.
Twelfth Night -- II. 5.
HAPPINESS.
O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness
through another man's eyes.
As You Like It -- V. 2.
HONESTY.
An honest man is able to speak for himself,
when a knave is not.
King Henry VI., Part 2d -- V. 1.
To be honest, as this world goes, is to be
one man picked out of ten thousand.
Hamlet -- II. 2.
HYPOCRISY.
Devils soonest tempt,
resembling spirits of light.
Love's Labor Lost -- IV. 3.
One may smile, and smile,
and be a villain.
Hamlet -- I. 5.
INNOCENCE.
The trust I have is in mine innocence,
And therefore am I bold and resolute.
Troilus and Cressida -- IV. 4.
INSINUATIONS.
The shrug, the hum, or ha; these petty brands,
That calumny doth use;--
For calumny will sear
Virtue itself:--these shrugs, these bums, and ha's,
When you have said, she's goodly, come between,
Ere you can say she's honest.
Winter's Tale -- II. 1.
JEALOUSY.
Trifles, light as air,
Are, to the jealous, confirmations strong
As proofs of holy writ.
Othello -- III. 3.
O beware of jealousy:
It is the green-eyed monster, which does mock
The meat it feeds on.
Idem.
JESTS.
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
of him that hears it.
Love's Labor Lost -- V. 2.
He jests at scars,
that never felt a wound.
Romeo and Juliet -- II. 2.
JUDGMENT.
Heaven is above all; there sits a Judge,
That no king can corrupt.
King Henry VIII, -- III. 1.
LIFE.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth -- V. 5.
We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
The Tempest -- IV. 1.
LOVE.
A murd'rous, guilt shows not itself more soon,
Than love that would seem bid: love's night is noon.
Twelfth Night -- III. 2.
Sweet love, changing his property,
Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate.
King Richard II. -- III. 2.
When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforced ceremony.
Julius Caesar -- II. 2.
The course of true-love
never did run smooth.
Midsummer Night's Dream -- I. 1.
Love looks not with the eyes,
but with the mind.
Idem.
She never told her love,--
But let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud,
Feed on her damask check: she pined in thought
And, with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
Twelfth Night -- II. 4.
But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit.
The Merchant of Venice -- II. 6.
MAN.
What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculties! in form, and moving,
how express and admirable! in action, how like
an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the
beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!
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