What! wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?
The commonwealth of Venice in their armoury have this inscription: "Happy is that city which in time of peace thinks of war."
When he is best, he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast.
Speak me fair in death.
Is it so nominated in the bond?
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?
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.
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.
Now, by two-headed Janus, Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.
Makes a swan-like end, Fading in music.
Thus when I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into Charybdis, your mother.
Shall I bend low, and in a bondman's key, With bated breath and whispering humbleness.
I do know of these That therefore only are reputed wise For saying nothing.
These blessed candles of the night.
The kindest man, The best-condition'd and unwearied spirit In doing courtesies.
I dote on his very absence.
Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?
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.
I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.
I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand.
O Father Abram! what these Christians are, Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect The thoughts of others!
Many a time and oft In the Rialto you have rated me.
Fish not, with this melancholy bait, For this fool gudgeon, this opinion.
'T is not in the bond.
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.
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.
My meaning in saying he is a good man, is to have you understand me that he is sufficient.
I am a tainted wether of the flock, Meetest for death: the weakest kind of fruit Drops earliest to the ground.
If my gossip Report be an honest woman of her word.
How many things by season season'd are To their right praise and true perfection!
A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel!
Truth will come to sight; murder cannot be hid long.
Even in the force and road of casualty.
There is no vice so simple but assumes Some mark of virtue in his outward parts.
The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o'er a cold decree.
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. He hates our sacred nation, and he rails, Even there where merchants most do congregate.
It is a wise father that knows his own child.
Thus ornament is but the guiled shore To a most dangerous sea.
In the twinkling of an eye.
An honest exceeding poor man.
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 over-weather'd ribs and ragged sails, Lean, rent, and beggar'd by the strumpet wind!
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt But being season'd with a gracious voice Obscures the show of evil?
Must I hold a candle to my shames?
For when did friendship take A breed for barren metal of his friend?
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
This night methinks is but the daylight sick.
I am Sir Oracle, And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!
Here are a few of the unpleasant'st words That ever blotted paper!
I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,-- A stage, where every man must play a part; And mine a sad one.
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 patines of bright gold: There 's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings, Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins. Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
A harmless necessary cat.
Ships are but boards, sailors but men: there be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves.
We will answer all things faithfully.
The very staff of my age, my very prop.
All that glisters is not gold.
An upright judge, a learned judge!
I never knew so young a body with so old a head.
Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart or in the head? How begot, how nourished? Reply, Reply.
The villany you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction.
Hanging and wiving goes by destiny.
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles.
There are a sort of men whose visages Do cream and mantle like a standing pond.
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
My ventures are not in one bottom trusted, Nor to one place.
They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.
You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine.
A second Daniel, a Daniel, Jew! Now, infidel, I have you on the hip.
Mislike me not for my complexion, The shadow'd livery of the burnish'd sun.
And the vile squeaking of the wry-necked fife.
He is well paid that is well satisfied.
Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way Of starved people.
An unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractised; Happy in this, she is not yet so old But she may learn.
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.
You have too much respect upon the world: They lose it that do buy it with much care.
But love is blind, and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves commit.
Let it serve for table-talk.
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 monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway, It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God's, When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That in the course of justice none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy.
A goodly apple rotten at the heart: O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
You take my house when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house; you take my life When you do take the means whereby I live.
Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.
He doth nothing but talk of his horse.
If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.
The seeming truth which cunning times put on To entrap the wisest.
Young in limbs, in judgment old.
I am never merry when I hear sweet music.
God, made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.
This night methinks is but the daylight sick. -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
I dote on his very absence. -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
It is a wise father that knows his own child. -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
A light wife doth make a heavy husband. -- Wm. Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
Delay not, Caesar. Read it instantly. -- Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" 3,1 Here is a letter, read it at your leisure. -- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice" 5,1 [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when referring to I/O system services.]
Must I hold a candle to my shames? -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed. -- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice"
The sewers of Paris in 1832 were far from being what they are to-day. Bruneseau had given the impulse, but the cholera was required to bring about the vast reconstruction which took place later on. It is surprising to say, for example, that in 1821, a part of the belt sewer, called the Grand Canal, as in Venice, still stood stagnating uncovered to the sky, in the Rue des Gourdes. It was only in 1821 that the city of Paris found in its pocket the two hundred and sixty-thousand eighty francs and six centimes required for covering this mass of filth. The three absorbing wells, of the Combat, the Cunette, and Saint-Mande, with their discharging mouths, their apparatus, their cesspools, and their depuratory branches, only date from 1836. The intestinal sewer of Paris has been made over anew, and, as we have said, it has been extended more than tenfold within the last quarter of a century.
Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall not we revenge?
"Here is my passport; examine the visa--Geneva, Milan, Venice, Trieste, Delvino, Yanina. Will you believe the government of a republic, a kingdom, and an empire?" Albert cast his eyes on the passport, then raised them in astonishment to Beauchamp. "You have been to Yanina?" said he.
Thus when I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into Charybdis, your mother.
"'A moment! Pardon!' cried another of the company. 'In the name of all us Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we have by no means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting present Lima for distant Venice in your corrupt comparison. Oh! do not bow and look surprised; you know the proverb all along this coast--"Corrupt as Lima." It but bears out your saying, too; churches more plentiful than billiard-tables, and for ever open--and "Corrupt as Lima." So, too, Venice; I have been there; the holy city of the blessed evangelist, St. Mark!--St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup! Thanks: here I refill; now, you pour out again.'
"Come, you might oblige your father. I shan't forget it. You've no heart, any of you--that's what it is? What's a day or two to you? Where are you going now--to Venice? Your Venice will keep another two days. I would have sent Alyosha, but what use is Alyosha in a thing like that? I send you just because you are a clever fellow. Do you suppose I don't see that? You know nothing about timber, but you've got an eye. All that is wanted is to see whether the man is in earnest. I tell you, watch his beard--if his beard shakes you know he is in earnest."
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time. / Some that will evermore peep through their eyes / And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper; / And other of such vinegar aspect / That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile, / Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.
They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.
"Well," said Franz to Albert, "do you know what is the best thing we can do? It is to pass the Carnival at Venice; there we are sure of obtaining gondolas if we cannot have carriages."
"Nonsense! Decide at once. My dear fellow, decide! If you settle the matter, write me a line; give it to the priest and he'll send it on to me at once. And I won't delay you more than that. You can go to Venice. The priest will give you horses back to Volovya station."
"No," he cried, "they have not wounded, but perhaps they have robbed me!" and he thrust his hands into his pockets. They were untouched; the hundred louis he had reserved for his journey from Rome to Venice were in his trousers pocket, and in that of his great-coat he found the little note-case containing his letter of credit for 5,050,000 francs. "Singular bandits!" he exclaimed; "they have left me my purse and pocket-book. As I was saying last night, they intend me to be ransomed. Hallo, here is my watch! Let me see what time it is." Danglars' watch, one of Breguet's repeaters, which he had carefully wound up on the previous night, struck half past five. Without this, Danglars would have been quite ignorant of the time, for daylight did not reach his cell. Should he demand an explanation from the bandits, or should he wait patiently for them to propose it? The last alternative seemed the most prudent, so he waited until twelve o'clock. During all this time a sentinel, who had been relieved at eight o'clock, had been watching his door. Danglars suddenly felt a strong inclination to see the person who kept watch over him. He had noticed that a few rays, not of daylight, but from a lamp, penetrated through the ill-joined planks of the door; he approached just as the brigand was refreshing himself with a mouthful of brandy, which, owing to the leathern bottle containing it, sent forth an odor which was extremely unpleasant to Danglars. "Faugh!" he exclaimed, retreating to the farther corner of his cell.
Solve only the first of the two problems; you will be Venice, you will be England. You will have, like Venice, an artificial power, or, like England, a material power; you will be the wicked rich man. You will die by an act of violence, as Venice died, or by bankruptcy, as England will fall. And the world will allow to die and fall all that is merely selfishness, all that does not represent for the human race either a virtue or an idea.
"He is a philanthropist," answered the other; "and no doubt his motive in visiting Paris is to compete for the Monthyon prize, given, as you are aware, to whoever shall be proved to have most materially advanced the interests of virtue and humanity. If my vote and interest can obtain it for him, I will readily give him the one and promise the other. And now, my dear Franz, let us talk of something else. Come, shall we take our luncheon, and then pay a last visit to St. Peter's?" Franz silently assented; and the following afternoon, at half-past five o'clock, the young men parted. Albert de Morcerf to return to Paris, and Franz d'Epinay to pass a fortnight at Venice. But, ere he entered his travelling carriage, Albert, fearing that his expected guest might forget the engagement he had entered into, placed in the care of a waiter at the hotel a card to be delivered to the Count of Monte Cristo, on which, beneath the name of Vicomte Albert de Morcerf, he had written in pencil--"27, Rue du Helder, on the 21st May, half-past ten A.M."
Unlesson'd girl, unschool'd, unpractised; / Happy in this, she is not yet so old / But she may learn.
Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.
How many things by season season'd are / To their right praise and true perfection!
Sometimes from her eyes / I did receive fair speechless messages.
The shadowed livery of the burnished sun.
They went by way of the boulevard. The first wedding coach held Cosette and Aunt Gillenormand, M. Gillenormand and Jean Valjean. Marius, still separated from his betrothed according to usage, did not come until the second. The nuptial train, on emerging from the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, became entangled in a long procession of vehicles which formed an endless chain from the Madeleine to the Bastille, and from the Bastille to the Madeleine. Maskers abounded on the boulevard. In spite of the fact that it was raining at intervals, Merry-Andrew, Pantaloon and Clown persisted. In the good humor of that winter of 1833, Paris had disguised itself as Venice. Such Shrove Tuesdays are no longer to be seen now-a-days. Everything which exists being a scattered Carnival, there is no longer any Carnival.
"When you pay me a visit in my cell, my young friend," said he, "I will show you an entire work, the fruits of the thoughts and reflections of my whole life; many of them meditated over in the shades of the Colosseum at Rome, at the foot of St. Mark's column at Venice, and on the borders of the Arno at Florence, little imagining at the time that they would be arranged in order within the walls of the Chateau d'If. The work I speak of is called 'A Treatise on the Possibility of a General Monarchy in Italy,' and will make one large quarto volume."
The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark / When neither is attended, and I think / The nightingale, if she should sing by day, / when every goose is cackling, would be thought / No better a musician than the wren.
The Society of the Rights of Man engendered the Society of Action. These were impatient individuals who broke away and hastened ahead. Other associations sought to recruit themselves from the great mother societies. The members of sections complained that they were torn asunder. Thus, the Gallic Society, and the committee of organization of the Municipalities. Thus the associations for the liberty of the press, for individual liberty, for the instruction of the people against indirect taxes. Then the Society of Equal Workingmen which was divided into three fractions, the levellers, the communists, the reformers. Then the Army of the Bastilles, a sort of cohort organized on a military footing, four men commanded by a corporal, ten by a sergeant, twenty by a sub-lieutenant, forty by a lieutenant; there were never more than five men who knew each other. Creation where precaution is combined with audacity and which seemed stamped with the genius of Venice.
Quarrelling with occasion.
"No, for Venice; I shall remain in Italy for another year or two."
"Which road?" asked the postilion in Italian. "The Ancona road," replied the baron. Signor Pastrini interpreted the question and answer, and the horses galloped off. Danglars intended travelling to Venice, where he would receive one part of his fortune, and then proceeding to Vienna, where he would find the rest, he meant to take up his residence in the latter town, which he had been told was a city of pleasure.
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. / 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes / The throned monarch better than his crown.
This reconciliation being completed, Guido Ubaldo, the Duke of Urbino, again fled to Venice, having first destroyed all the fortresses in his state; because, trusting in the people, he did not wish that the fortresses, which he did not think he could defend, should be held by the enemy, since by these means a check would be kept upon his friends. But the Duke Valentino, having completed this convention, and dispersed his men throughout the Romagna, set out for Imola at the end of November together with his French men-at-arms: thence he went to Cesena, where he stayed some time to negotiate with the envoys of the Vitelli and Orsini, who had assembled with their men in the duchy of Urbino, as to the enterprise in which they should now take part; but nothing being concluded, Oliverotto da Fermo was sent to propose that if the duke wished to undertake an expedition against Tuscany they were ready; if he did not wish it, then they would besiege Sinigalia. To this the duke replied that he did not wish to enter into war with Tuscany, and thus become hostile to the Florentines, but that he was very willing to proceed against Sinigalia.
O love, be moderate, allay thy ecstasy; / In measure rain thy joy; scant this excess; / I feel too much thy blessing! Make it less, / For fear I surfeit.
Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, / Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?
(&) Bartolomeo Colleoni of Bergamo; died 1457. Roberto of San Severino; died fighting for Venice against Sigismund, Duke of Austria, in 1487. "Primo capitano in Italia."-- Machiavelli. Count of Pitigliano; Nicolo Orsini, born 1442, died 1510.
A light yacht, chaste and elegant in its form, was gliding amidst the first dews of night over the immense lake, extending from Gibraltar to the Dardanelles, and from Tunis to Venice. The vessel resembled a swan with its wings opened towards the wind, gliding on the water. It advanced swiftly and gracefully, leaving behind it a glittering stretch of foam. By degrees the sun disappeared behind the western horizon; but as though to prove the truth of the fanciful ideas in heathen mythology, its indiscreet rays reappeared on the summit of every wave, as if the god of fire had just sunk upon the bosom of Amphitrite, who in vain endeavored to hide her lover beneath her azure mantle. The yacht moved rapidly on, though there did not appear to be sufficient wind to ruffle the curls on the head of a young girl. Standing on the prow was a tall man, of a dark complexion, who saw with dilating eyes that they were approaching a dark mass of land in the shape of a cone, which rose from the midst of the waves like the hat of a Catalan. "Is that Monte Cristo?" asked the traveller, to whose orders the yacht was for the time submitted, in a melancholy voice.
Some there be that shadows kiss, / Such have but a shadow's bliss.
Tell me where is fancy bred, / Or in the heart, or in the head? / How begot, how nourished? / It is engender'd in the eyes, / With gazing fed.
Though justice be thy plea, consider this--/ That in the course of justice none of us / Should see salvation.
Nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage, / But music for the time doth change its nature.
Who riseth from a feast / With that keen appetite that he sits down? / Where is the horse that doth untread again / His tedious measures with the unabated fire / That he did pace them first? All things that are / Are with more spirit chased than enjoy'd.
How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false / As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins / The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars! / Who, inward searched, have livers white as milk.
"You shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, and Naples: at Florence, Venice, and Vienna: all the ground I have wandered over shall be re-trodden by you: wherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph's foot shall step also. Ten years since, I flew through Europe half mad; with disgust, hate, and rage as my companions: now I shall revisit it healed and cleansed, with a very angel as my comforter."
It is well understood here, that by the words Venice, England, we designate not the peoples, but social structures; the oligarchies superposed on nations, and not the nations themselves. The nations always have our respect and our sympathy. Venice, as a people, will live again; England, the aristocracy, will fall, but England, the nation, is immortal. That said, we continue.
EPITOME (Gr. [Greek: epitomê], from [Greek: epitemnein], to cut short), an abridgment, abstract or summary giving the salient points of a book, law case, &c., a short and concise account of any particular subject or event. By transference _epitome_ is also used to express the representation of a larger thing, concrete or abstract, reproduced in miniature. Thus St Mark's was called by Ruskin the "epitome of Venice," as it embraces examples of all the periods of architecture from the 10th to the 19th centuries. Entry: EPITOME
He did not put all his materials into _Don Juan_. "Mazeppa, a tale of the Russian Ukraine," based on a passage in Voltaire's _Charles XII._, was finished by the 30th of September 1818 and published with "An Ode" (on Venice) on the 28th of June 1819. In the spring of 1819 Byron met in Venice, and formed a connexion with, an Italian lady of rank, Teresa (born Gamba), wife of the Cavaliere Guiccioli. She was young and beautiful, well-read and accomplished. Married at sixteen to a man nearly four times her age, she fell in love with Byron at first sight, soon became and for nearly four years remained his mistress. A good and true wife to him in all but name, she won from Byron ample devotion and a prolonged constancy. Her volume of _Recollections_ (_Lord Byron jugé par les témoins de sa vie_, 1869), taken for what it is worth, is testimony in Byron's favour. The countess left Venice for Ravenna at the end of April; within a month she sent for Byron, and on the 10th of June he arrived at Ravenna and took rooms in the Strada di Porto Sisi. The house (now No. 295) is close to Dante's tomb, and to gratify the countess and pass the time he wrote the "Prophecy of Dante" (published April 21, 1821). According to the preface the poem was a metrical experiment, an exercise in _terza rima_; but it had a deeper significance. It was "intended for the Italians." Its purport was revolutionary. In the fourth canto of _Childe Harold_, already translated into Italian, he had attacked the powers, and "Albion most of all" for her betrayal of Venice, and knowing that his word had weight he appeals to the country of his adoption to strike a blow for freedom--to "unite." It is difficult to realize the force or extent of Byron's influence on continental opinion. His own countrymen admired his poetry, but abhorred and laughed at his politics. Abroad he was the prophet and champion of liberty. His hatred of tyranny--his defence of the oppressed--was a word spoken in season when there were few to speak but many to listen. It brought consolation and encouragement, and it was not spoken in vain. It must, however, be borne in mind that Byron was more of a king-hater than a people-lover. He was against the oppressors, but he disliked and despised the oppressed. He was aristocrat by conviction as well as birth, and if he espoused a popular cause it was _de haut en bas_. His connexion with the Gambas brought him into touch with the revolutionary movement, and thenceforth he was under the espionage of the Austrian embassy at Rome. He was suspected and "shadowed," but he was left alone. Entry: BYRON