I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad.
Why, let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play; For some must watch, while some must sleep: So runs the world away.
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
The setting sun, and music at the close, As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last, Writ in remembrance more than things long past.
What! wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?
In my mind's eye, Horatio.
Why, then the world 's mine oyster, Which I with sword will open.
But I am constant as the northern star, Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality There is no fellow in the firmament.
We are ready to try our fortunes To the last man.
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.
Patience, thou young and rose-lipp'd cherubin.
He that dies pays all debts.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
Sits the wind in that corner?
O, what authority and show of truth Can cunning sin cover itself withal!
I 'll charm the air to give a sound, While you perform your antic round.
True is it that we have seen better days.
I had rather than forty shillings I had my Book of Songs and Sonnets here.
So curses all Eve's daughters, of what complexion soever.
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.
Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.
At your age The hey-day in the blood is tame, it 's humble.
His nose was as sharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields.
The tyrant custom, most grave senators, Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war My thrice-driven bed of down.
We burn daylight.
Three misbegotten knaves in Kendal green.
The rude sea grew civil at her song, And certain stars shot madly from their spheres To hear the sea-maid's music.
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam At one fell swoop?
Let me take you a button-hole lower.
A woman moved is like a fountain troubled,-- Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.
Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, Uproar the universal peace, confound All unity on earth.
Forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum.
We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
O, that a man might know The end of this day's business ere it come!
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Some of us will smart for it.
Cursed be he that moves my bones.
O thou weed, Who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne'er been born.
What a case am I in.
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes Which thou dost glare with!
England has two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare,but the Bible made England.
I saw Othello's visage in his mind.
Thou cutt'st my head off with a golden axe.
Give me another horse: bind up my wounds.
Anger is like A full-hot horse, who being allow'd his way, Self-mettle tires him.
Consideration, like an angel, came And whipped the offending Adam out of him.
The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good.
Why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on.
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.
I charge thee, fling away ambition: By that sin fell the angels.
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.
More matter for a May morning.
Is it so nominated in the bond?
Or, having sworn too hard a keeping oath, Study to break it and not break my troth.
If ever Shakespeare rants, it is not when his imagination is hurrying him along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along.--_Macaulay._
Truth is truth To the end of reckoning.
But when I tell him he hates flatterers, He says he does, being then most flattered.
The world is not thy friend nor the world's law.
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?
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on.
_1 W._ When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain? _2 W._ When the hurlyburly 's done, When the battle 's lost and won.
_Gon._ Here is everything advantageous to life. _Ant._ True; save means to live.
Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?
Tetchy and wayward.
Light seeking light doth light of light beguile.
When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
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 speak to thee: I 'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane: O, answer me! Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre, Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd, Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws To cast thee up again. What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous, and we fools of nature So horridly to shake our disposition With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
The silence often of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.
If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.
Abuses me to damn me.
I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool, With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news.
Speak to me as to thy thinkings, As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts The worst of words.
The rankest compound of villanous smell that ever offended nostril.
Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.
I will make a Star-chamber matter of it.
Every room Hath blazed with lights and bray'd with minstrelsy.
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 here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We 'ld jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which being taught, return To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice To our own lips.
She 's beautiful, and therefore to be wooed; She is a woman, therefore to be won.
Gold, worse poison to men's souls, / Doing more murder in this loathsome world, / Than these poor compounds that thou may'st not sell.
Close up his eyes and draw the curtain close; And let us all to meditation.
He will give the devil his due.
The wealthy curled darlings of our nation.
The blood more stirs To rouse a lion than to start a hare!
Well said: that was laid on with a trowel.
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear.
Now, by two-headed Janus, Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.
Whip me such honest knaves.
Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining upon the start.
I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated To closeness and the bettering of my mind.
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention!
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 That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour!
But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.
Makes a swan-like end, Fading in music.
Thy ignominy sleep with thee in the grave, But not remember'd in thy epitaph!
O my prophetic soul! My uncle!
Hath his bellyful of fighting.
What a taking was he in when your husband asked who was in the basket!
The barge she sat in, like a burnishd throne, burnd 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, and made the water which they beat to follow faster, as amorous of their strokes. For her own person, it beggard all description
Our new heraldry is hands, not hearts.
Even so my sun one early morn did shine, / With all triumphant splendour on my brow; / But out, alack! it was but one hour mine.
My father's brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules.
Shall I bend low, and in a bondman's key, With bated breath and whispering humbleness.
Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.
But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd Than that which withering on the virgin thorn Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.
To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day, All in the morning betime.
Diseases desperate grown By desperate appliance are relieved, Or not at all.
I am in blood Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er.
'T is not so above; There is no shuffling, there the action lies In his true nature.
While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred.
Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
An angel! or, if not, An earthly paragon!
Put thyself into the trick of singularity.
The "why" is plain as way to parish church.
A proper man, as one shall see in a summer's day.
Epicurean cooks Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite.
The deep of night is crept upon our talk, And nature must obey necessity.
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
Let every man be master of his time Till seven at night.
Let 's go hand in hand, not one before another.
~Shakespeare.~--There is only one writer in whom I find something that reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. It is Shakespeare.--_Heinrich Heine._
I think most readers of Shakespeare sometimes find themselves thrown into exalted mental conditions like those produced by music.--_O. W. Holmes._
As chaste as unsunn'd snow.
And smooth as monumental alabaster.
The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.
So sweet was ne'er so fatal.
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 frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination, That if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy; Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
You speak an infinite deal of nothing.
From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, he is all mirth.
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.
I must become a borrower of the night For a dark hour or twain.
My cake is dough.
Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
All the world 's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard; Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Thou troublest me; I am not in the vein.
Hereafter, in a better world than this, I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.
It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence.--_Johnson._
An ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own.
Many-headed multitude.
Have you not heard it said full oft, A woman's nay doth stand for naught?
The true beginning of our end.
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 eyes Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses, That die unmarried, ere they can behold Bright Phoebus in his strength,--a malady Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds, The flower-de-luce being one.
Praising what is lost Makes the remembrance dear.
Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eyes by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native wood-notes wild.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! 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.
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.
The kindest man, The best-condition'd and unwearied spirit In doing courtesies.
I dote on his very absence.
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 false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep: No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to,--'t is a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there 's the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there 's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? 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.
By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes. Open, locks, Whoever knocks!
Lay on, Macduff, And damn'd be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"
Out of the jaws of death.
My friends were poor but honest.
The phrase would be more german to the matter, if we could carry cannon by our sides.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
My business in this state Made me a looker on here in Vienna.
_Glen._ I can call spirits from the vasty deep. _Hot._ Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?
O, call back yesterday, bid time return!
This bold bad man.
Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
We must be free or die who speak the tongue / That Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold / Which Milton held.
As is the bud bit with an envious worm Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
Take note, take note, O world, To be direct and honest is not safe.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?
Here 's metal more attractive.
To be honest as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
A friend should bear his friend's infirmities, But Brutus makes mine greater than they are.
Listen to many, Speak to a few.
I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.
Man but a rush against Othello's breast, And he retires.
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.
Nature is fine in love, and where 't is fine, It sends some precious instance of itself After the thing it loves.
Good orators, when they are out, they will spit.
A morsel for a monarch.
Which shall to all our nights and days to come Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, The extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine.
That we would do, We should do when we would.
His life was gentle, and the elements So mix'd in him, that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, "This was a man!"
Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor.
Here comes the lady! O, so light a foot Will ne'er wear out the everlasting flint.
You may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar.
A kind Of excellent dumb discourse.
My nature is subdu'd To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.
I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts: I am no orator, as Brutus is; But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man.
_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 variable.
Infirm of purpose!
A high hope for a low heaven.
Even in the afternoon of her best days.
Taking the measure of an unmade grave.
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.
I had rather be a kitten and cry mew Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers.
Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.
Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.
Report me and my cause aright.
The shirt of Nessus is upon me.
I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking.
"Poor deer," quoth he, "thou makest a testament As worldlings do, giving thy sum of more To that which had too much."
And if his name be George, I 'll call him Peter; For new-made honour doth forget men's names.
I drink to the general joy o' the whole table.
He is the half part of a blessed man, Left to be finished by such as she; And she a fair divided excellence, Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.
Now the king drinks to Hamlet.
Leave her to heaven And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To prick and sting her.
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 abroad; The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.
And art made tongue-tied by authority.
Still you keep o' the windy side of the law.
There 's rosemary, that 's for remembrance; . . . and there is pansies, that 's for thoughts.
The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind, A savageness in unreclaimed blood.
Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets In mere oppugnancy.
Thy old groans ring yet in my ancient ears.
No man's pie is freed From his ambitious finger.
I will show myself highly fed and lowly taught.
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
Hysterica passio, down, thou climbing sorrow, Thy element 's below.
_1 Clo._ Argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life. _2 Clo._ But is this law? _1 Clo._ Ay, marry, is 't; crowner's quest law.
Life's uncertain voyage.
O, never say hereafter But I am truest speaker. You call'd me brother When I was but your sister.
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
Press not a falling man too far!
Life is as tedious as twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.
The air-drawn dagger.
My little spirit, see, Sits in a foggy cloud, and stays for me.
She was a wight, if ever such wight were,-- _Des._ To do what? _Iago._ To suckle fools and chronicle small beer. _Des._ O most lame and impotent conclusion!
More is thy due than more than all can pay.
Striving to better, oft we mar what 's well.
Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them,--but not for love.
Deeper than did ever plummet sound I 'll drown my book.
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.
For his bounty, There was no winter in 't; an autumn 't was That grew the more by reaping.
The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.
We have scotch'd the snake, not kill'd it.
That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man, If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.
For 't is the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petar.
Nay, an thou 'lt mouth, I 'll rant as well as thou.
So may he rest; his faults lie gently on him!
A king of shreds and patches.
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.
Mark now, how a plain tale shall put you down.
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.
If after every tempest come such calms, May the winds blow till they have waken'd death!
Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.
My grief lies onward and my joy behind.
By this leek, I will most horribly revenge: I eat and eat, I swear.
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.
I 'll not budge an inch.
Fish not, with this melancholy bait, For this fool gudgeon, this opinion.
That which ordinary men are fit for, I am qualified in; and the best of me is diligence.