GLOUCESTER: My lord, 'tis but a base ignoble mind
 That mounts no higher than a bird can soar.
      -- _2 Henry VI_, II, i
%
KING HENRY VI: How irksome is this music to my heart!
 When such strings jar, what hope of harmony?
      -- _2 Henry VI_, II, i
%
GLOUCESTER: Thus sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud;
 And after summer evermore succeeds
 Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold:
 So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.
      -- _2 Henry VI_, II, iv
%
QUEEN MARGARET: Small curs are not regarded when they grin;
 But great men tremble when the lion roars.
      -- _2 Henry VI_, III, i
%
YORK: Show me one scar character'd on thy skin:
 Men's flesh preserved so whole do seldom win.
      -- _2 Henry VI_, III, i
%
WARWICK: Who finds the heifer dead and bleeding fresh
 And sees fast by a butcher with an axe,
 But will suspect 'twas he that made the slaughter?
      -- _2 Henry VI_, III, ii
%
SUFFOLK: Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan,
 I would invent as bitter-searching terms,
 As curst, as harsh and horrible to hear,
 Deliver'd strongly through my fixed teeth,
 With full as many signs of deadly hate,
 As lean-faced Envy in her loathsome cave.
      -- _2 Henry VI_, III, ii
%
SUFFOLK: I can no more: live thou to joy thy life;
 Myself no joy in nought but that thou livest.
      -- _2 Henry VI_, III, ii
%
CADE: Be brave, then; for your captain is brave, and vows reformation. 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.
      -- _2 Henry VI_, IV, ii
%
DICK: The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
      -- _2 Henry VI_, IV, ii
%
CADE: 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? Some say the bee stings: but I say, 'tis the bee's wax; for I did but seal
once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since.
      -- _2 Henry VI_, IV, ii
%
    SMITH: The clerk of Chatham: he can write and read and cast accompt.
    CADE: O monstrous!
      -- _2 Henry VI_, IV, ii
%
BUCKINGHAM: Trust nobody, for fear you be betray'd.
      -- _2 Henry VI_, IV, v
%
CADE: Be it known unto thee by these presence, even the presence of Lord
Mortimer, that I am the besom that must sweep the court clean of such filth as
thou art. 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 dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill. It
will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a
noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to
hear.
      -- _2 Henry VI_, IV, vii
%
CADE: Was ever feather so lightly blown to and fro as this multitude?
      -- _2 Henry VI_, IV, ix
%
RICHARD: Sword, hold thy temper; heart, be wrathful still:
 Priests pray for enemies, but princes kill.
      -- _2 Henry VI_, V, ii
%
YORK: In them I trust; for they are soldiers,
 Witty, courteous, liberal, full of spirit.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, I, ii
%
RUTLAND: So looks the pent-up lion o'er the wretch
 That trembles under his devouring paws;
 And so he walks, insulting o'er his prey,
 And so he comes, to rend his limbs asunder.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, I, iii
%
YORK: O tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide!
      -- _3 Henry VI_, I, iv
%
    EDWARD: Dazzle mine eyes, or do I see three suns?
    RICHARD: Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun;
     Not separated with the racking clouds,
     But sever'd in a pale clear-shining sky.
     See, see! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss,
     As if they vow'd some league inviolable:
     Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun.
     In this the heaven figures some event.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, II, i
%
RICHARD: To weep is to make less the depth of grief:
 Tears then for babes; blows and revenge for me.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, II, i
%
CLIFFORD: The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, II, ii
%
KING HENRY VI: O God! methinks it were a happy life,
 To be no better than a homely swain;
 To sit upon a hill, as I do now,
 To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
 Thereby to see the minutes how they run,
 How many make the hour full complete;
 How many hours bring about the day;
 How many days will finish up the year;
 How many years a mortal man may live.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, II, v
%
KING HENRY VI: When this is known, then to divide the times:
 So many hours must I tend my flock;
 So many hours must I take my rest;
 So many hours must I contemplate;
 So many hours must I sport myself;
 So many days my ewes have been with young;
 So many weeks ere the poor fools will ean:
 So many years ere I shall shear the fleece:
 So minutes, hours, days, months, and years,
 Pass'd over to the end they were created,
 Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, II, v
%
SON: Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, II, v
%
KING HENRY VI: O piteous spectacle! O bloody times!
 Whiles lions war and battle for their dens,
 Poor harmless lambs abide their enmity.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, II, v
%
KING HENRY VI: 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.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, III, i
%
KING HENRY VI: Look, as I blow this feather from my face,
 And as the air blows it to me again,
 Obeying with my wind when I do blow,
 And yielding to another when it blows,
 Commanded always by the greater gust;
 Such is the lightness of you common men.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, III, ii
%
GLOUCESTER: Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,
 And cry 'Content' to that which grieves my heart,
 And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
 And frame my face to all occasions.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, III, ii
%
GLOUCESTER: I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall;
 I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk;
 I'll play the orator as well as Nestor,
 Deceive more slily than Ulysses could,
 And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.
 I can add colours to the chameleon,
 Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
 And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
 Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?
 Tut, were it farther off, I'll pluck it down.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, III, ii
%
KING EDWARD IV: Though fortune's malice overthrow my state,
 My mind exceeds the compass of her wheel.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, IV, iii
%
KING EDWARD IV: What fates impose, that men must needs abide;
 It boots not to resist both wind and tide.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, IV, iii
%
KING HENRY VI: Ay, such a pleasure as incaged birds
 Conceive when after many moody thoughts
 At last by notes of household harmony
 They quite forget their loss of liberty.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, IV, vi
%
WARWICK: Thus yields the cedar to the axe's edge,
 Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle,
 Under whose shade the ramping lion slept,
 Whose top-branch overpeer'd Jove's spreading tree
 And kept low shrubs from winter's powerful wind.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, V, ii
%
GLOUCESTER: Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;
 The thief doth fear each bush an officer.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, V, vi
%
GLOUCESTER: I have no brother, I am like no brother;
 And this word 'love,' which graybeards call divine,
 Be resident in men like one another
 And not in me: I am myself alone.
      -- _3 Henry VI_, V, vi
%
GLOUCESTER: What should I say? His deeds exceed all speech:
 He ne'er lift up his hand but conquered.
      -- _1 Henry VI_, I, i
%
EXETER: We mourn in black: why mourn we not in blood?
      -- _1 Henry VI_, I, i
%
EXETER: Upon a wooden coffin we attend,
 And death's dishonourable victory
 We with our stately presence glorify,
 Like captives bound to a triumphant car.
      -- _1 Henry VI_, I, i
%
JOAN LA PUCELLE: Glory is like a circle in the water,
 Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself
 Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.
      -- _1 Henry VI_, I, iii
%
PLANTAGENET: I'll note you in my book of memory,
 To scourge you for this apprehension.
      -- _1 Henry VI_, II, iv
%
    FIRST SERVING-MAN: I'll to the surgeon's.
    SECOND SERVING-MAN: And so will I.
    THIRD SERVING-MAN: And I will see what physic the tavern affords.
      -- _1 Henry VI_, III, i
%
EXETER: This late dissension grown betwixt the peers
 Burns under feigned ashes of forged love
 And will at last break out into a flame:
 As fester'd members rot but by degree,
 Till bones and flesh and sinews fall away,
 So will this base and envious discord breed.
      -- _1 Henry VI_, III, i
%
JOAN LA PUCELLE: You judge it straight a thing impossible
 To compass wonders but by help of devils.
      -- _1 Henry VI_, V, vii
%
SUFFOLK: For what is wedlock forced but a hell,
 An age of discord and continual strife?
 Whereas the contrary bringeth bliss,
 And is a pattern of celestial peace.
      -- _1 Henry VI_, V, viii
%
KING HENRY VI: I feel such sharp dissension in my breast,
 Such fierce alarums both of hope and fear,
 As I am sick with working of my thoughts.
      -- _1 Henry VI_, V, viii
%
VALENTINE: She shall be dignified with this high honour--
 To bear my lady's train, lest the base earth
 Should from her vesture chance to steal a kiss
 And, of so great a favour growing proud,
 Disdain to root the summer-swelling flower
 And make rough winter everlastingly.
      -- _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, II, iv
%
PROTEUS: O heaven! were man
 But constant, he were perfect. That one error
 Fills him with faults; makes him run through all the sins:
 Inconstancy falls off ere it begins.
      -- _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_, V, iv
%
GLOUCESTER: Now is the winter of our discontent
 Made glorious summer by this sun of York.
      -- _Richard III_, I, i
%
GLOUCESTER: Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
 And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
 To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
 He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
 To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
      -- _Richard III_, I, i
%
GLOUCESTER: Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
 Have no delight to pass away the time,
 Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
 And descant on mine own deformity.
      -- _Richard III_, I, i
%
GLOUCESTER: And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
 To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
 I am determined to prove a villain.
      -- _Richard III_, I, i
%
GLOUCESTER: Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
 By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams.
      -- _Richard III_, I, i
%
GLOUCESTER: Simple, plain Clarence! I do love thee so,
 That I will shortly send thy soul to heaven,
 If heaven will take the present at our hands.
      -- _Richard III_, I, i
%
GLOUCESTER: And, if I fall not in my deep intent,
 Clarence hath not another day to live:
 Which done, God take King Edward to his mercy,
 And leave the world for me to bustle in!
      -- _Richard III_, I, i
%
LADY ANNE: O wonderful, when devils tell the truth!
      -- _Richard III_, I, ii
%
    GLOUCESTER: But shall I live in hope?
    LADY ANNE: All men, I hope, live so.
      -- _Richard III_, I, ii
%
GLOUCESTER: Was ever woman in this humour woo'd?
 Was ever woman in this humour won?
 I'll have her; but I will not keep her long.
      -- _Richard III_, I, ii
%
GLOUCESTER: I'll be at charges for a looking-glass,
 And entertain some score or two of tailors,
 To study fashions to adorn my body:
 Since I am crept in favour with myself,
 Will maintain it with some little cost.
      -- _Richard III_, I, ii
%
GLOUCESTER: Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,
 That I may see my shadow as I pass.
      -- _Richard III_, I, ii
%
QUEEN MARGARET: They that stand high have many blasts to shake them;
 And if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces.
      -- _Richard III_, I, iii
%
QUEEN MARGARET: Live each of you the subjects to his hate,
 And he to yours, and all of you to God's!
      -- _Richard III_, I, iii
%
CLARENCE: 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 gnaw'd upon;
 Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
 Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
 All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea:
 Some lay in dead men's skulls; and, in those holes
 Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept,
 As 'twere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,
 Which woo'd the slimy bottom of the deep,
 And mock'd the dead bones that lay scatter'd by.
      -- _Richard III_, I, iv
%
BRAKENBURY: I will not reason what is meant hereby,
 Because I will be guiltless of the meaning.
      -- _Richard III_, I, iv
%
    SECOND MURDERER: 'Faith, some certain dregs of conscience are yet within
me.
    FIRST MURDERER: Remember our reward, when the deed is done.
    SECOND MURDERER: 'Zounds, he dies: I had forgot the reward.
      -- _Richard III_, I, iv
%
    FIRST MURDERER: Where is thy conscience now?
    SECOND MURDERER: In the Duke of Gloucester's purse.
      -- _Richard III_, I, iv
%
GLOUCESTER: But he, poor soul, by your first order died,
 And that a winged Mercury did bear:
 Some tardy cripple bore the countermand,
 That came too lag to see him buried.
      -- _Richard III_, II, i
%
SECOND CITIZEN: I fear, I fear 'twill prove a giddy world.
      -- _Richard III_, II, iii
%
THIRD CITIZEN: When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks;
 When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand;
 When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?
 Untimely storms make men expect a dearth.
 All may be well; but if God sort it so,
 'Tis more than we deserve or I expect.
      -- _Richard III_, II, iii
%
QUEEN ELIZABETH: I see, as in a map, the end of all.
      -- _Richard III_, II, iv
%
PRINCE EDWARD: But say, my lord, it were not register'd,
 Methinks the truth should live from age to age,
 As 'twere retail'd to all posterity,
 Even to the general all-ending day.
      -- _Richard III_, III, i
%
GLOUCESTER: So wise so young, they say, do never live long.
      -- _Richard III_, III, i
%
CATESBY: 'Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord,
 When men are unprepared and look not for it.
      -- _Richard III_, III, ii
%
GLOUCESTER: If? Thou protector of this damned strumpet,
 Talk'st thou to me of 'ifs'? Thou art a traitor:
 Off with his head!
      -- _Richard III_, III, iv
%
HASTINGS: O momentary grace of mortal men,
 Which we more hunt for than the grace of God!
 Who builds his hopes in air of your good looks,
 Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast,
 Ready, with every nod, to tumble down
 Into the fatal bowels of the deep.
      -- _Richard III_, III, iv
%
BUCKINGHAM: Tut, I can counterfeit the deep tragedian;
 Speak and look back, and pry on every side,
 Tremble and start at wagging of a straw,
 Intending deep suspicion: ghastly looks
 Are at my service, like enforced smiles;
 And both are ready in their offices,
 At any time, to grace my stratagems.
      -- _Richard III_, III, v
%
GLOUCESTER: And to that end we wished your lord-ship here,
 T' avoid the censures of the carping world.
      -- _Richard III_, III, v
%
QUEEN ELIZABETH: Stay, yet look back with me unto the Tower.
 Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes
 Whom envy hath immured within your walls!
 Rough cradle for such little pretty ones!
 Rude ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow
 For tender princes, use my babies well!
 So foolish sorrow bids your stones farewell.
      -- _Richard III_, IV, i
%
KING RICHARD III: Shall I be plain? I wish the bastards dead;
 And I would have it suddenly perform'd.
      -- _Richard III_, IV, ii
%
KING RICHARD III: Uncertain way of gain! But I am in
 So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin.
      -- _Richard III_, IV, ii
%
QUEEN MARGARET: So, now prosperity begins to mellow
 And drop into the rotten mouth of death.
      -- _Richard III_, IV, iv
%
    QUEEN ELIZABETH: O thou well skill'd in curses, stay awhile,
     And teach me how to curse mine enemies!
    QUEEN MARGARET: Forbear to sleep the nights, and fast the days;
     Compare dead happiness with living woe;
     Think that thy babes were fairer than they were,
     And he that slew them fouler than he is:
     Bettering thy loss makes the bad causer worse:
     Revolving this will teach thee how to curse.
      -- _Richard III_, IV, iv
%
KING RICHARD III: Harp not on that string, madam; that is past.
      -- _Richard III_, IV, iv
%
KING RICHARD III: Go, gentleman, every man unto his charge
 Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls:
 Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
 Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.
      -- _Richard III_, V, iii
%
KING RICHARD III: Let us to it pell-mell,
 If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.
      -- _Richard III_, V, iii
%
KING RICHARD III: A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
      -- _Richard III_, V, iv
%
KING RICHARD III: Slave, I have set my life upon a cast,
 And I will stand the hazard of the die.
      -- _Richard III_, V, iv
%
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: For they say every why hath a wherefore.
      -- _The Comedy of Errors_, II, ii
%
ABBESS: In food, in sport, and life-preserving rest
 To be disturbed would mad man or beast.
      -- _The Comedy of Errors_, V, i
%
ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE: And thereupon these errors are arose.
      -- _The Comedy of Errors_, V, i
%
SLY: I'll not budge an inch, boy.
      -- _The Taming of the Shrew_, Induction 1
%
LORD: O monstrous beast! how like a swine he lies!
 Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!
      -- _The Taming of the Shrew_, Induction 1
%
SLY: Come, madam wife, sit by my side and let the world slip: we shall ne'er be
younger.
      -- _The Taming of the Shrew_, Induction 2
%
LUCENTIO: Here let us breathe and haply institute
 A course of learning and ingenious studies.
      -- _The Taming of the Shrew_, I, i
%
TRANIO: Music and poesy use to quicken you;
 The mathematics and the metaphysics,
 Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you.
      -- _The Taming of the Shrew_, I, i
%
TRANIO: No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en:
 In brief, sir, study what you most affect.
      -- _The Taming of the Shrew_, I, i
%
HORTENSIO: Faith, as you say, there's small choice in rotten apples.
      -- _The Taming of the Shrew_, I, i
%
GREMIO: O this learning, what a thing it is!
      -- _The Taming of the Shrew_, I, ii
%
PETRUCHIO: And kiss me, Kate, we will be married o'Sunday.
      -- _The Taming of the Shrew_, II, i
%
BIANCA: Old fashions please me best; I am not so nice,
 To change true rules for old inventions.
      -- _The Taming of the Shrew_, III, i
%
PETRUCHIO: This is a way to kill a wife with kindness;
 And thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humour.
      -- _The Taming of the Shrew_, IV, i
%
WIDOW: He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.
      -- _The Taming of the Shrew_, V, ii
%
TITUS: Hail, Rome, victorious in thy mourning weeds!
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, I, i
%
TITUS: There greet in silence, as the dead are wont,
 And sleep in peace, slain in your country's wars!
 O sacred receptacle of my joys,
 Sweet cell of virtue and nobility,
 How many sons of mine hast thou in store,
 That thou wilt never render to me more!
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, I, i
%
TAMORA: O cruel, irreligious piety!
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, I, i
%
TITUS: In peace and honour rest you here, my sons;
 Rome's readiest champions, repose you here in rest,
 Secure from worldly chances and mishaps!
 Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells,
 Here grow no damned drugs, here are no storms,
 No noise, but silence and eternal sleep:
 In peace and honour rest you here, my sons!
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, I, i
%
MARCUS: Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp'd,
 Doth burn the heart to cinders where it is.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, II, iv
%
TITUS: Hear me, grave fathers! noble tribunes, stay!
 For pity of mine age, whose youth was spent
 In dangerous wars, whilst you securely slept;
 For all my blood in Rome's great quarrel shed,
 For all the frosty nights that I have watch'd,
 And for these bitter tears, which now you see
 Filling the agèd wrinkles in my cheeks;
 Be pitiful to my condemnèd sons,
 Whose souls are not corrupted as 'tis thought.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, III, i
%
TITUS: For two and twenty sons I never wept,
 Because they died in honour's lofty bed;
 For these, these, tribunes, in the dust I write
 My heart's deep languor and my soul's sad tears.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, III, i
%
TITUS: Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones,
 Who though they cannot answer my distress,
 Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes,
 For that they will not intercept my tale:
 When I do weep they humbly at my feet
 Receive my tears and seem to weep with me.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, III, i
%
TITUS: Rome could afford no tribune like to these.
 A stone is soft as wax, tribunes more hard than stones:
 A stone is silent, and offendeth not,
 And tribunes with their tongues doom men to death.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, III, i
%
TITUS: Why, foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive
 That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers?
 Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey
 But me and mine.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, III, i
%
TITUS: What fool hath added water to the sea,
 Or brought a faggot to bright-burning Troy?
 My grief was at the height before thou camest,
 And now like Nilus, it disdaineth bounds.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, III, i
%
TITUS: It was my deer; and he that wounded her
 Hath hurt me more than had he killed me dead.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, III, i
%
TITUS: For now I stand as one upon a rock
 Environed with a wilderness of sea,
 Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave,
 Expecting ever when some envious surge
 Will in his brinish bowels swallow him.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, III, i
%
MARCUS: O brother, speak with possibilities,
 And do not break into these deep extremes.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, III, i
%
TITUS: If there were reason for these miseries,
 Then into limits could I bind my woes.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, III, i
%
TITUS: Thou shalt not sigh, nor hold thy stumps to heaven,
 Nor wink, nor nod, nor kneel, nor make a sign,
 But I of these will wrest an alphabet
 And by still practise learn to know thy meaning.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, III, ii
%
    MARCUS: Alas, my lord, I have but kill'd a fly.
    TITUS: But how, if that fly had a father and mother?
     How would he hang his slender gilded wings,
     And buzz lamenting doings in the air!
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, III, ii
%
MARCUS: O, why should nature build so foul a den,
 Unless the gods delight in tragedies?
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, IV, i
%
AARON: Pray to the devils; the gods have given us over.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, IV, ii
%
    CHIRON: Thou hast undone our mother.
    AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, IV, ii
%
AARON: Coal-black is better than another hue,
 In that it scorns to bear another hue;
 For all the water in the ocean
 Can never turn the swan's black legs to white,
 Although she lave them hourly in the flood.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, IV, ii
%
    LUCIUS: Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?
    AARON: Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, V, i
%
AARON: Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
 And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,
 Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
 And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
 Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
 'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, V, i
%
LUCIUS: As for that ravenous tiger, Tamora,
 No funeral rite, nor man in mourning weed,
 No mournful bell shall ring her burial;
 But throw her forth to beasts and birds to prey.
 Her life was beastly and devoid of pity;
 And, being dead, let birds on her take pity.
      -- _Titus Andronicus_, V, iii
%
KING: Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
 Live register'd upon our brazen tombs
 And then grace us in the disgrace of death;
 When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,
 The endeavor of this present breath may buy
 That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge
 And make us heirs of all eternity.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, I, i
%
KING: Our court shall be a little Academe,
 Still and contemplative in living art.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, I, i
%
    BEROWNE: What is the end of study? let me know.
    KING: Why, that to know, which else we should not know.
    BEROWNE: Things hid and barr'd, you mean, from common sense?
    KING: Ay, that is study's godlike recompense.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, I, i
%
BEROWNE: Come on, then; I will swear to study so,
 To know the thing I am forbid to know.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, I, i
%
BEROWNE: Small have continual plodders ever won
 Save base authority from others' books.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_,
%
BEROWNE: These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights
 That give a name to every fixed star
 Have no more profit of their shining nights
 Than those that walk and wot not what they are.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, I, i
%
BEROWNE: So study evermore is overshot:
 While it doth study to have what it would
 It doth forget to do the thing it should.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, I, i
%
KING: Ay, that there is. Our court, you know, is haunted
 A man in all the world's new fashion planted,
 That hath a mint of phrases in his brain;
 One whom the music of his own vain tongue
 Doth ravish like enchanting harmony.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, I, i
%
    COSTARD: When would you have it done, sir?
    BEROWNE: This afternoon.
    COSTARD: Well, I will do it, sir: fare you well.
    BEROWNE: Thou knowest not what it is.
    COSTARD: I shall know, sir, when I have done it.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, III, i
%
BEROWNE: What, I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!
 A woman, that is like a German clock,
 Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,
 And never going aright, being a watch,
 But being watch'd that it may still go right!
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, III, i
%
HOLOFERNES: This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant
spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions,
revolutions: these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb
of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, IV, ii
%
HOLOFERNES: A good lustre of conceit in a tuft of earth; fire enough for a
flint, pearl enough for a swine. 'Tis pretty; it is well.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, IV, ii
%
BEROWNE: From women's eyes this doctrine I derive;
 They are the ground, the books, the academes
 From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, IV, iii
%
BEROWNE: Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
 Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, IV, iii
%
HOLOFERNES: He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of
his argument.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, V, i
%
    HOLOFERNES: _Via_, goodman Dull! Thou hast spoken no word all this while.
    DULL: Nor understood none neither, sir.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, V, i
%
KATHARINE: He made her melancholy, sad, and heavy;
 And so she died: had she been light, like you,
 Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit,
 She might ha' been a grandam ere she died:
 And so may you; for a light heart lives long.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, V, ii
%
BEROWNE: This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease,
 And utters it again when God doth please.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, V, ii
%
PRINCESS: A time, methinks, too short
 To make a world-without-end bargain in.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, V, ii
%
ROSALINE: A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
 Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
 Of him that makes it.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, V, ii
%
ARMADO: The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You that way:
we this way.
      -- _Love's Labor's Lost_, V, ii
%
LYSANDER: You have her father's love, Demetrius;
 Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, I, i
%
LYSANDER: The course of true love never did run smooth.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, I, i
%
HERMIA: By all the vows that ever men have broke,
 In number more than ever women spoke.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, I, i
%
HELENA: Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
 And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, I, i
%
FLUTE: Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, I, ii
%
BOTTOM: I'll speak in a monstrous little voice.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, I, ii
%
FAIRY: Over hill, over dale,
 Thorough bush, thorough brier,
 Over park, over pale,
 Thorough flood, thorough fire,
 I do wander everywhere.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, II, i
%
FAIRY: Are not you he
 That frights the maidens of the villagery;
 Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
 And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
 And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
 Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, II, i
%
PUCK: Thou speak'st aright;
 I am that merry wanderer of the night.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, II, i
%
OBERON: Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, II, i
%
TITANIA: Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
 As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
 Contagious fogs; which falling in the land
 Have every pelting river made so proud
 That they have overborne their continents.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, II, i
%
PUCK: I'll put a girdle round about the earth
 In forty minutes.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, II, i
%
BOTTOM: A calendar, a calendar! look in the almanac.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, III, i
%
PUCK: I'll follow you, I'll lead you about a round,
 Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier:
 Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,
 A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;
 And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
 Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, III, i
%
BOTTOM: And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together
now-a-days.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, III, i
%
PUCK: For briers and thorns at their apparel snatch;
 Some sleeves, some hats, from yielders all things catch.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, III, ii
%
PUCK: I go, I go; look how I go,
 Swifter than arrow from the Tartar's bow.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, III, ii
%
PUCK: Lord, what fools these mortals be!
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, III, ii
%
PUCK: And those things do best please me
 That befall preposterously.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, III, ii
%
HERMIA: Dark night, that from the eye his function takes,
 The ear more quick of apprehension makes;
 Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense,
 It pays the hearing double recompense.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, III, ii
%
HELENA: And though she be but little, she is fierce.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, III, ii
%
PUCK: Damned spirits all,
 That in crossways and floods have burial,
 Already to their wormy beds are gone;
 For fear lest day should look their shames upon,
 They willfully themselves exile from light
 And must for aye consort with black-brow'd night.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, III, ii
%
OBERON: Then, my queen, in silence sad,
 Trip we after the night's shade:
 We the globe can compass soon,
 Swifter than the wandering moon.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, IV, i
%
HIPPOLYTA: I never heard so musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, IV, i
%
BOTTOM: I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man
to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this
dream. Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. Methought I was,--and
methought I had,--but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what
methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen,
man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to
report, what my dream was.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, IV, i
%
BOTTOM: And, most dear actors, eat no onions nor garlic, for we are to utter
sweet breath; and I do not doubt but to hear them say, it is a sweet comedy. No
more words: away! go, away!
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, IV, ii
%
THESEUS: 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.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, V, i
%
THESEUS: The poet's eye, in 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.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, V, i
%
THESEUS: Or in the night, imagining some fear,
 How easy is a bush supposed a bear!
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, V, i
%
THESEUS: That is some satire, keen and critical.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, V, i
%
THESEUS: "A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus
 And his love Thisbe; very tragical mirth."
 Merry and tragical? Tedious and brief?
 That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow.
 How shall we find the concord of this discord?
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_,
%
PHILOSTRATE: A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,
 Which is as brief as I have known a play;
 But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,
 Which makes it tedious; for in all the play
 There is not one word apt, one player fitted.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, V, i
%
PROLOGUE: That is the true beginning of our end.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, V, i
%
DEMETRIUS: It is the wittiest partition that ever I heard discourse, my lord.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, V, i
%
THESEUS: The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if
imagination amend them.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, V, i
%
PUCK: If we shadows have offended,
 Think but this, and all is mended,
 That you have but slumber'd here
 While these visions did appear.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, V, i
%
PUCK: Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
 We will make amends ere long;
 Else the Puck a liar call;
 So, good night unto you all.
 Give me your hands, if we be friends,
 And Robin shall restore amends.
      -- _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, V, i
%
CHORUS: From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
 A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, prologue
%
MONTAGUE: Away from light steals home my heavy son
 And private in his chamber pens himself,
 Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out
 And makes himself an artificial night.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, i
%
MONTAGUE: Black and portentous must this humour prove.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, i
%
ROMEO: Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs;
 Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
 Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, i
%
ROMEO: What is it else? a madness most discreet,
 A choking gall and a preserving sweet.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, i
%
ROMEO: Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, i
%
    SERVANT: I pray, sir, can you read?
    ROMEO: Ay, mine own fortune in my misery.
    SERVANT: Perhaps you have learned it without book.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, ii
%
BENVOLIO: Tut, you saw her fair, none else being by:
 Herself poised with herself in either eye:
 But in that crystal scales let there be weigh'd
 Your lady's love against some other maid
 That I will show you shining at this feast,
 And she shall scant show well that now seems best.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, ii
%
NURSE: And then my husband -- God be with his soul,
 A' was a merry man -- took up the child,
 'Yea,' quoth he, 'dost thou fall upon thy face?
 Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit,
 Wilt thou not, Jule?'
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, iii
%
NURSE: An honour! Were not I thine only nurse,
 I would say thou hadst suck'd wisdom from thy teat.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, iii
%
LADY CAPULET: Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face,
 And find delight writ there with beauty's pen.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, iii
%
    ROMEO: I dream'd a dream to-night.
    MERCUTIO: And so did I.
    ROMEO: Well, what was yours?
    MERCUTIO: That dreamers often lie.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, iv
%
ROMEO: Peace, peace, Mercutio, peace.
 Thou talk'st of nothing.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, iv
%
MERCUTIO: True, I talk of dreams,
 Which are the children of an idle brain,
 Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
 Which is as thin of substance as the air...
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, iv
%
ROMEO: I fear, too early: for my mind misgives
 Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
 Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
 With this night's revels and expire the term
 Of a despised life closed in my breast
 By some vile forfeit of untimely death.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, iv
%
CAPULET: Welcome, gentlemen. I have seen the day
 That I have worn a visor and could tell
 A whispering tale in a fair lady's ear,
 Such as would please. 'Tis gone, 'tis gone, 'tis gone.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, v
%
ROMEO: O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright.
 It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
 Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear --
 Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, v
%
    ROMEO: If I profane with my unworthiest hand
     This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
     My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
     To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
    JULIET: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
     Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
     For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
     And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, v
%
JULIET: My only love sprung from my only hate.
 Too early seen unknown, and known too late.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, I, v
%
CHORUS: But passion lends them power, time means, to meet
 Tempering extremities with extreme sweet.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, prologue
%
MERCUTIO: If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, i
%
ROMEO: He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, ii
%
ROMEO: But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
 It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, ii
%
ROMEO: Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
 Who is already sick and pale with grief,
 That thou her maid art far more fair than she.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, ii
%
ROMEO: See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand.
 O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
 That I might touch that cheek.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, ii
%
JULIET: O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, ii
%
JULIET: What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
 Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
 Belonging to a man.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, ii
%
JULIET: What's in a name? that which we call a rose
 By any other name would smell as sweet.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, ii
%
JULIET: Romeo, doff thy name,
 And for that name which is no part of thee
 Take all myself.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, ii
%
ROMEO: With love's light wings did I o'er-perch these walls,
 For stony limits cannot hold love out,
 And what love can do that dares love attempt.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, ii
%
JULIET: O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
 That monthly changes in her circled orb,
 Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, ii
%
JULIET: I have no joy of this contract to-night:
 It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
 Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
 Ere one can say 'It lightens.'
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, ii
%
JULIET: My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
 My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
 The more I have, for both are infinite.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, ii
%
    ROMEO: I would I were thy bird.
    JULIET: Sweet, so would I:
     Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, ii
%
JULIET: Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrow,
 That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, ii
%
FRIAR LAURENCE: The earth that's nature's mother is her tomb;
 What is her burying grave that is her womb.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, iii
%
FRIAR LAURENCE: O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies
 In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities.
 For naught so vile that on the earth doth live
 But to the earth some special good doth give.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, iii
%
FRIAR LAURENCE: Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied;
 And vice sometime's by action dignified.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, iii
%
FRIAR LAURENCE: Be plain, good son, and homely in thy drift;
 Riddling confession finds but riddling shrift.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, iii
%
FRIAR LAURENCE: Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, iii
%
MERCUTIO: Any man that can write may answer a letter.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, iv
%
MERCUTIO: Now art thou what thou art, by art as well as by nature.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, iv
%
    NURSE: I pray you, sir, what saucy merchant was this, that was so full of
his ropery?
    ROMEO: A gentleman, nurse, that loves to hear himself talk, and will speak
more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, iv
%
JULIET: But old folks, many feign as they were dead;
 Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, v
%
FRIAR LAURENCE: These violent delights have violent ends
 And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
 Which as they kiss consume.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, vi
%
FRIAR LAURENCE: The sweetest honey
 Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,
 And in the taste confounds the appetite.
 Therefore love moderately; long love doth so.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, vi
%
FRIAR LAURENCE: Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, vi
%
JULIET: Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,
 Brags of his substance, not of ornament.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, II, vi
%
BENVOLIO: I pray thee, good Mercutio, let's retire:
 The day is hot, the Capulets abroad,
 And, if we meet, we shall not scape a brawl;
 For now, these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, i
%
MERCUTIO: Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other
reason but because thou hast hazel eyes.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, i
%
MERCUTIO: Men's eyes were made to look, and let them gaze;
 I will not budge for no man's pleasure, I.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, i
%
MERCUTIO: A plague o' both your houses.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, i
%
    BENVOLIO: What, art thou hurt?
    MERCUTIO: Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch; marry, 'tis enough.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, i
%
    ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
    MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but
'tis enough, 'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave
man.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, i
%
MERCUTIO: A plague o' both your houses,
 They have made worms' meat of me.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, i
%
ROMEO: O, I am fortune's fool!
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, i
%
JULIET: So tedious is this day
 As is the night before some festival
 To an impatient child that hath new robes
 And may not wear them.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, ii
%
JULIET: O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
 Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, ii
%
NURSE: There's no trust,
 No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured,
 All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, ii
%
JULIET: 'Romeo is banished!'
 There is no end, no limit, measure, bound,
 In that word's death; no words can that woe sound.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, ii
%
FRIAR LAURENCE: Hence from Verona art thou banished.
 Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, iii
%
FRIAR LAURENCE: Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy,
 To comfort thee, though thou art banished.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, iii
%
FRIAR LAURENCE: Why rail'st thou on thy birth, the heaven and earth?
 Since birth, and heaven, and earth all three do meet
 In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, iii
%
FRIAR LAURENCE: Happiness courts thee in her best array;
 But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench,
 Thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love:
 Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, iii
%
CAPULET: And there an end.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, iv
%
JULIET: Wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day:
 It was the nightingale, and not the lark,
 That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear;
 Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate-tree:
 Believe me, love, it was the nightingale.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, v
%
ROMEO: Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
 Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, v
%
JULIET: I must hear from thee every day in the hour,
 For in a minute there are many days.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, v
%
JULIET: O God, I have an ill-divining soul!
 Methinks I see thee, now thou art below,
 As one dead in the bottom of a tomb:
 Either my eyesight fails, or thou look'st pale.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, v
%
LADY CAPULET: Evermore weeping for your cousin's death?
 What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, v
%
LADY CAPULET: Therefore, have done: some grief shows much of love;
 But much of grief shows still some want of wit.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, v
%
CAPULET: How now, how now! Chopp'd logic? What is this?
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, III, v
%
JULIET: Chain me with roaring bears;
 Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house,
 O'er-cover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones,
 With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls;
 Or bid me go into a new-made grave
 And hide me with a dead man in his shroud;
 Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble;
 And I will do it without fear or doubt,
 To live an unstain'd wife to my sweet love.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, IV, i
%
FRIAR LAURENCE: Take thou this vial, being then in bed,
 And this distilled liquor drink thou off;
 When presently through all thy veins shall run
 A cold and drowsy humour, for no pulse
 Shall keep his native progress, but surcease.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, IV, i
%
JULIET: I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
 That almost freezes up the heat of life.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, IV, iii
%
JULIET: My dismal scene I needs must act alone.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, IV, iii
%
JULIET: Or, if I live, is it not very like,
 The horrible conceit of death and night,
 Together with the terror of the place,
 As in a vault, an ancient receptacle
 Where for these many hundred years the bones
 Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd,
 Where bloody Tybalt yet but green in earth
 Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
 At some hours in the night spirits resort --
 Alack, alack!
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, IV, iii
%
CAPULET: Death lies on her like an untimely frost
 Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, IV, v
%
CAPULET: Death, that hath ta'en her hence to make me wail
 Ties up my tongue and will not let me speak.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, IV, v
%
CAPULET: All things that we ordained festival
 Turn from their office to black funeral:
 Our instruments to melancholy bells,
 Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast;
 Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change,
 Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,
 And all things change them to the contrary.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, IV, v
%
PETER: I will carry no crotchets: I'll re you, I'll fa you; do you note me?
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, IV, v
%
ROMEO: Ah me, how sweet is love itself possess'd
 When but love's shadows are so rich in joy.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, V, i
%
ROMEO: Famine is in thy cheeks,
 Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes,
 Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back.
 The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law;
 The world affords no law to make thee rich;
 Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, V, i
%
ROMEO: There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls,
 Doing more murders in this loathsome world,
 Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, V, i
%
ROMEO: Ah, dear Juliet,
 Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe
 That unsubstantial death is amorous,
 And that the lean abhorred monster keeps
 Thee here in dark to be his paramour?
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, V, iii
%
ROMEO: O true apothecary,
 Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, V, iii
%
JULIET: Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end.
 O churl. Drunk all, and left no friendly drop
 To help me after? I will kiss thy lips.
 Haply some poison yet doth hang on them.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, V, iii
%
LADY CAPULET: O me! This sight of death is as a bell
 That warns my old age to a sepulchre.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, V, iii
%
PRINCE: Capulet, Montague,
 See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
 That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, V, iii
%
PRINCE: Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
 Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
 For never was a story of more woe
 Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
      -- _Romeo and Juliet_, V, iii
%
RICHARD: The accuser and the accused freely speak:
 High-stomach'd are they both, and full of ire,
 In rage deaf as the sea, hasty as fire.
      -- _Richard II_, I, i
%
BOLINGBROKE: Thou art a traitor and a miscreant,
 Too good to be so and too bad to live,
 Since the more fair and crystal is the sky,
 The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.
      -- _Richard II_, I, i
%
RICHARD: Deep malice makes too deep incision.
      -- _Richard II_, I, i
%
RICHARD: Forget, forgive; conclude and be agreed;
 Our doctors say this is no month to bleed.
      -- _Richard II_, I, i
%
MOWBRAY: The purest treasure mortal times afford
 Is spotless reputation: that away,
 Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.
      -- _Richard II_, I, i
%
GAUNT: All places that the eye of heaven visits
 Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
      -- _Richard II_, I, iii
%
GAUNT: O, but they say the tongues of dying men
 Enforce attention like deep harmony:
 Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
 For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
      -- _Richard II_, II, i
%
YORK: Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity--
 So it be new, there's no respect how vile--
 That is not quickly buzzed into his ears?
      -- _Richard II_, II, i
%
GAUNT: His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
 For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
 Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short;
 He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
 With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder:
 Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
 Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
      -- _Richard II_, II, i
%
GAUNT: This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd 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 world,
 This precious stone set in the silver sea,
 Which serves it in the office of a wall,
 Or as a moat defensive to a house,
 Against the envy of less happier lands,
 This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
 This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings.
      -- _Richard II_, II, i
%
YORK: Comfort's in heaven; and we are on the earth,
 Where nothing lives but crosses, cares and grief.
      -- _Richard II_, II, ii
%
YORK: But time will not permit: all is uneven,
 And every thing is left at six and seven.
      -- _Richard II_, II, ii
%
NORTHUMBERLAND: These high wild hills and rough uneven ways
 Draws out our miles, and makes them wearisome.
      -- _Richard II_, II, iii
%
RICHARD: His treasons will sit blushing in his face,
 Not able to endure the sight of day.
      -- _Richard II_, III, ii
%
RICHARD: Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
 Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
 Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
      -- _Richard II_, III, ii
%
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
 And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
 How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
 Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
 Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
 All murder'd ...
      -- _Richard II_, III, ii
%
SCROOPE: Men judge by the complexion of the sky
 The state and inclination of the day.
      -- _Richard II_, III, ii
%
SCROOPE: I play the torturer, by small and small
 To lengthen out the worst that must be spoken.
      -- _Richard II_, III, ii
%
RICHARD: Thus play I in one person many people,
 And none contented: sometimes am I king,
 Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
 And so I am: then crushing penury
 Persuades me I was better when a king;
 Then am I king'd again: and by and by
 Think that I am unking'd by Bolingbroke,
 And straight am nothing: but whate'er I be,
 Nor I nor any man that but man is
 With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
 With being nothing.
      -- _Richard II_, V, v
%
RICHARD: Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is,
 When time is broke and no proportion kept!
 So is it in the music of men's lives.
      -- _Richard II_, V, v
%
RICHARD: I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
      -- _Richard II_, V, v
%
ANTONIO: In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:
 It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
 But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,
 What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,
 I am to learn;
 And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,
 That I have much ado to know myself.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, I, i
%
GRATIANO: You have too much respect upon the world:
 They lose it that do buy it with much care.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, I, i
%
BASSANIO: Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all
Venice.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, I, i
%
BASSANIO: 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.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, I, i
%
BASSANIO: In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft,
 I shot his fellow of the self-same flight
 The self-same way with more advised watch,
 To find the other forth, and by adventuring both
 I oft found both.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, I, i
%
NERISSA: Yet, for aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too much as
they that starve with nothing.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, I, ii
%
ANTONIO: Mark you this, Bassanio,
 The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, I, iii
%
SHYLOCK: Fast bind, fast find.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, II, v
%
GRATIANO: All things that are,
 Are with more spirit chased than enjoy'd.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, II, vi
%
MOROCCO: (Reads) All that glisters is not gold.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, II, vii
%
MOROCCO: (Reads) Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, II, vii
%
SHYLOCK: I am a Jew. 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 we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest,
we will resemble you in that.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, III, i
%
PORTIA: Tell me where is fancy bred,
 Or in the heart, or in the head?
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, III, ii
%
BASSANIO: The world is still deceived with ornament.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, III, ii
%
BASSANIO: In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,
 But, being seasoned with a gracious voice,
 Obscures the show of evil?
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, III, ii
%
BASSANIO: In religion,
 What damned error, but some sober brow
 Will bless it and approve it with a text,
 Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, III, ii
%
BASSANIO: There is no vice so simple but assumes
 Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, III, ii
%
    ANTONIO: I pray thee, hear me speak.
    SHYLOCK: I'll have my bond; I will not hear thee speak:
     I'll have my bond; and therefore speak no more.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, III, iii
%
PORTIA: For in companions
 That do converse and waste the time together,
 Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love,
 There must be needs a like proportion
 Of lineaments, of manners and of spirit.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, III, iv
%
LORENZO: How every fool can play upon the word! I think the best grace of wit
will shortly turn into silence, and discourse grow commendable in none only but
parrots.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, III, v
%
DUKE: I beseech you, let his lack of years be no impediment to let him lack a
reverend estimation; for I never knew so young a body with so old a head.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, IV, i
%
PORTIA: The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
 It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
 Upon the place beneath.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, IV, i
%
SHYLOCK: You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, IV, i
%
PORTIA: He is well paid that is well satisfied.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, IV, i
%
LORENZO: Such harmony is in immortal souls;
 But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
 Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, V, i
%
LORENZO: 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 Merchant of Venice_, V, i
%
PORTIA: How far that little candle throws his beams!
 So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, V, i
%
PORTIA: The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark,
 When neither is attended.
      -- _The Merchant of Venice_, V, i
%
AUSTRIA: The peace of heaven is theirs that lift their swords
 In such a just and charitable war.
      -- _King John_, II, i
%
KING PHILIP: This little abstract doth contain that large
 Which died in Geffrey, and the hand of time
 Shall draw this brief into as huge a volume.
      -- _King John_, II, i
%
BASTARD: O, now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel;
 The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs;
 And now he feasts, mousing the flesh of men,
 In undetermined differences of kings.
      -- _King John_, II, i
%
BASTARD: Zounds! I was never so bethump'd with words
 Since I first call'd my brother's father dad.
      -- _King John_, II, i
%
BASTARD: Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail
 And say there is no sin but to be rich;
 And being rich, my virtue then shall be
 To say there is no vice but beggary.
      -- _King John_, II, i
%
BASTARD: Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back,
 When gold and silver becks me to come on.
      -- _King John_, III, i
%
CONSTANCE: No, I defy all counsel, all redress,
 But that which ends all counsel, true redress,
 Death, death; O amiable lovely death!
      -- _King John_, III, iii
%
CONSTANCE: 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;
 Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?
      -- _King John_, III, iii
%
PANDULPH: No natural exhalation in the sky,
 No scope of nature, no distemper'd day,
 No common wind, no customed event,
 But they will pluck away his natural cause
 And call them meteors, prodigies and signs.
      -- _King John_, III, iii
%
SALISBURY: Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp,
 To guard a title that was rich before,
 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.
      -- _King John_, IV, ii
%
PEMBROKE: This act is as an ancient tale new told.
      -- _King John_, IV, ii
%
KING JOHN: There is no sure foundation set on blood,
 No certain life achieved by others' death.
      -- _King John_, IV, ii
%
HUBERT: My lord, they say five moons were seen to-night;
 Four fixed, and the fifth did whirl about
 The other four in wondrous motion.
      -- _King John_, IV, ii
%
PRINCE: Unless hours were cups of sack and minutes capons and clocks the
tongues of bawds and dials the signs of leaping-houses and the blessed sun
himself a fair hot wench in flame-coloured taffeta, I see no reason why thou
shouldst be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.
      -- _1 Henry IV_, I, ii
%
FALSTAFF: O, thou hast damnable iteration and art indeed able to corrupt a
saint.
      -- _1 Henry IV_, I, ii
%
    PRINCE: I see a good amendment of life in thee; from praying to
purse-taking.
    FALSTAFF: Why, Hal, 'tis my vocation, Hal; 'tis no sin for a man to labour
in his vocation.
      -- _1 Henry IV_, I, ii
%
PRINCE: Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
 Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
 To smother up his beauty from the world,
 That, when he please again to be himself,
 Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at,
 By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
 Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
      -- _1 Henry IV_, I, ii
%
PRINCE: If all the year were playing holidays,
 To sport would be as tedious as to work;
 But when they seldom come, they wish'd for come,
 And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
      -- _1 Henry IV_, I, ii
%
PRINCE: By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;
 And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
 My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,
 Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
 Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
      -- _1 Henry IV_, I, ii
%
HOTSPUR: And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
 He call'd them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
 To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse
 Betwixt the wind and his nobility.
      -- _1 Henry IV_, I, iii
%
FALSTAFF: If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a
reason upon compulsion, I.
      -- _1 Henry IV_, II, iv
%
FALSTAFF: If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked! If to be old and
merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned: if to be fat be to
be hated, then Pharaoh's lean kine are to be loved. No, my good lord; banish
Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins; but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack
Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more
valiant, being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry's
company, banish not him thy Harry's company: banish plump Jack, and banish all
the world!
      -- _1 Henry IV_, II, iv
%
GLENDOWER: These signs have mark'd me extraordinary;
 And all the courses of my life do show
 I am not in the roll of common men.
      -- _1 Henry IV_, III, i
%
    GLENDOWER: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
    HOTSPUR: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
     But will they come when you do call for them?
      -- _1 Henry IV_, III, i
%
KING HENRY IV: By being seldom seen, I could not stir
 But like a comet I was wonder'd at.
      -- _1 Henry IV_, III, ii
%
FALSTAFF: I was as virtuously given as a gentleman need to be; virtuous enough;
swore little; diced not above seven times a week; went to a bawdy-house once in
a quarter--of an hour; paid money that I borrowed, three of four times; lived
well and in good compass: and now I live out of all order, out of all compass.
      -- _1 Henry IV_, III, iii
%
HOTSPUR: But thought's the slave of life, and life time's fool; And time, that
takes survey of all the world, Must have a stop.
      -- _1 Henry IV_, V, iv
%
    HOTSPUR: O, I could prophesy,
     But that the earthy and cold hand of death
     Lies on my tongue: no, Percy, thou art dust
     And food for-- <dies>
    PRINCE: For worms, brave Percy: fare thee well, great heart.
      -- _1 Henry IV_, V, iv
%
PRINCE: Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk!
 When that this body did contain a spirit,
 A kingdom for it was too small a bound;
 But now two paces of the vilest earth
 Is room enough.
      -- _1 Henry IV_, V, iv
%
FALSTAFF: The better part of valour is discretion.
      -- _1 Henry IV_, V, iv
%
SLENDER: But 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.
      -- _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, I, i
%
SLENDER: I hope upon familiarity will grow more contempt.
      -- _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, I, i
%
PISTOL: Why, then the world's mine oyster.
 Which I with sword will open.
      -- _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, II, ii
%
ANNE: O, what a world of vile ill-favor'd faults
 Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year.
      -- _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, III, iv
%
ANNE: Alas, I had rather be set quick i' the earth
 And bowl'd to death with turnips!
      -- _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, III, iv
%
MISTRESS PAGE: We'll leave a proof by that which we will do,
 Wives may be merry, and yet honest too.
      -- _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, IV, ii
%
FALSTAFF: They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity,
chance, or death.
      -- _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, V, i
%
MISTRESS PAGE: Against such lewdsters and their lechery
 Those that betray them do no treachery.
      -- _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, V, iii
%
LEONATO: How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, I, i
%
BEATRICE: He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes
with the next block.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, I, i
%
    MESSENGER: I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.
    BEATRICE: No; an he were, I would burn my study.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, I, i
%
BEATRICE: Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to
feed it as Signior Benedick?
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, I, i
%
BENEDICK: That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she brought me up, I
likewise give her most humble thanks: but that I will have a recheat winded in
my forehead, or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon
me.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, I, i
%
BENEDICK: Because I will not do them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do
myself the right to trust none; and the fine is, for the which I may go the
finer, I will live a bachelor.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, I, i
%
DON PEDRO: What need the bridge much broader than the flood?
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, I, i
%
DON JOHN: I cannot hide what I am: I must be sad when I have cause and smile at
no man's jests, eat when I have stomach and wait for no man's leisure, sleep
when I am drowsy and tend on no man's business, laugh when I am merry and claw
no man in his humour.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, I, iii
%
    LEONATO: You may light on a husband that hath no beard.
    BEATRICE: What should I do with him? Dress him in my apparel and make him
my waiting-gentlewoman?
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, II, i
%
BEATRICE: He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard
is less than a man: and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that
is less than a man, I am not for him.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, II, i
%
    LEONATO: Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.
    BEATRICE: Not till God make men of some other metal than earth.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, II, i
%
BEATRICE: For, hear me, Hero: wooing, wedding, and repenting, is as a Scotch
jig, a measure, and a cinque pace: the first suit is hot and hasty, like a
Scotch jig, and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a
measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance and, with his
bad legs, falls into the cinque pace faster and faster, till he sink into his
grave.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, II, i
%
URSULA: Come, come, do you think I do not know you by your excellent wit? can
virtue hide itself? Go to, mum, you are he: graces will appear, and there's an
end.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, II, i
%
CLAUDIO: Let every eye negotiate for itself
 And trust no agent; for beauty is a witch
 Against whose charms faith melteth into blood.
 This is an accident of hourly proof.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, II, i
%
BENEDICK: She speaks poniards, and every word stabs.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, II, i
%
    DON PEDRO: Will you have me, lady?
    BEATRICE: No, my lord, unless I might have another for working-days: your
grace is too costly to wear every day. But, I beseech your grace, pardon me: I
was born to speak all mirth and no matter.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, II, i
%
BENEDICK: He was wont to speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man and
a soldier; and now is he turned orthography; his words are a very fantastical
banquet, just so many strange dishes.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, II, iii
%
DON PEDRO: It is the witness still of excellency
 To put a strange face on his own perfection.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, II, iii
%
BALTHASAR: There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, II, iii
%
BENEDICK: Now, divine air! now is his soul ravished! Is it not strange that
sheeps' guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, II, iii
%
BALTHASAR: Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
 Men were deceivers ever,
 One foot in sea and one on shore,
 To one thing constant never.
 Then sigh not so, but let them go,
 And be you blithe and bonny,
 Converting all your sounds of woe
 Into hey nonny, nonny.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, II, iii
%
BENEDICK: I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me,
because I have railed so long against marriage: but doth not the appetite
alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, II, iii
%
BENEDICK: When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live
till I were married.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, II, iii
%
URSULA: The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish
 Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
 And greedily devour the treacherous bait.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, III, i
%
    URSULA: She's limed, I warrant you: we have caught her, madam.
    HERO: If it proves so, then loving goes by haps:
     Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, III, i
%
BENEDICK: Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, III, ii
%
BORACHIO: Thou shouldst rather ask if it were possible any villany should be so
rich; for when rich villains have need of poor ones, poor ones may make what
price they will.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, III, iii
%
    LEONATO: Neighbours, you are tedious.
    DOGBERRY: It pleases your worship to say so, but we are the poor duke's
officers; but truly, for mine own part, if I were as tedious as a king, I could
find it in my heart to bestow it all of your worship.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, III, v
%
LEONATO: Hath no man's dagger here a point for me?
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, IV, i
%
FRIAR FRANCIS: Of every hearer: 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.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, IV, i
%
BEATRICE: Is he not approved in the height a villain, that hath slandered,
scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman? O that I were a man! What, bear her in hand
until they come to take hands; and then, with public accusation, uncovered
slander, unmitigated rancour, -- O God, that I were a man! I would eat his
heart in the market-place.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, IV, i
%
BEATRICE: O that I were a man for his sake! or that I had any friend would be a
man for my sake! But manhood is melted into courtesies, valour into compliment,
and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones too: he is now as valiant as
Hercules that only tells a lie and swears it.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, IV, i
%
BEATRICE: I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with
grieving.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, IV, i
%
LEONATO: I pray thee, cease thy counsel,
 Which falls into mine ears as profitless
 As water in a sieve.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, V, i
%
LEONATO: Bring me a father that so loved his child,
 Whose joy of her is overwhelm'd like mine,
 And bid him speak of patience;
 Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine
 And let it answer every strain for strain,
 As thus for thus and such a grief for such,
 In every lineament, branch, shape, and form:
 If such a one will smile and stroke his beard,
 Bid sorrow wag, cry 'hem!' when he should groan,
 Patch grief with proverbs, make misfortune drunk
 With candle-wasters; bring him yet to me,
 And I of him will gather patience.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, V, i
%
LEONATO: 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_,
%
LEONATO: For there was never yet philosopher
 That could endure the toothache patiently,
 However they have writ the style of gods
 And made a push at chance and sufferance.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, V, i
%
LEONATO: Here stand a pair of honourable men;
 A third is fled, that had a hand in it.
 I thank you, princes, for my daughter's death:
 Record it with your high and worthy deeds:
 'Twas bravely done, if you bethink you of it.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, V, i
%
BENEDICK: Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried: I can find out no
rhyme to 'lady' but 'baby', an innocent rhyme; for 'scorn', 'horn,' a hard
rhyme; for, 'school', 'fool', a babbling rhyme; very ominous endings.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, V, ii
%
BENEDICK: No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in
festival terms.
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, V, ii
%
BENEDICK: Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram?
      -- _Much Ado about Nothing_, V, ii
%
RUMOUR: Open your ears; for which of you will stop
 The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?
      -- _2 Henry IV_, Induction
%
RUMOUR: Rumour is a pipe
 Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures
 And of so easy and so plain a stop
 That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
 The still-discordant wavering multitude,
 Can play upon it.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, Induction
%
NORTHUMBERLAND: What news, Lord Bardolph? every minute now
 Should be the father of some stratagem.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, I, i
%
NORTHUMBERLAND: The times are wild: contention, like a horse
 Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose
 And bears down all before him.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, I, i
%
NORTHUMBERLAND: 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.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, I, i
%
NORTHUMBERLAND: And let this world no longer be a stage
 To feed contention in a lingering act;
 But let one spirit of the first-born Cain
 Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set
 On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,
 And darkness be the burier of the dead!
      -- _2 Henry IV_, I, i
%
FALSTAFF: I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other
men.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, I, ii
%
CHIEF JUSTICE: Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are
written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a
dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly?
is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single?
and every part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself
young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!
      -- _2 Henry IV_, II, ii
%
FALSTAFF: I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to
nothing with perpetual motion.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, I, ii
%
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: An habitation giddy and unsure
 Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, I, iii
%
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: Past and to come seems best; things present worst.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, I, iii
%
HASTINGS: We are time's subjects, and time bids be gone.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, I, iii
%
PRINCE: Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise
sit in the clouds and mock us.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, II, ii
%
LADY NORTHUMBERLAND: I have given over, I will speak no more.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, II, iii
%
POINS: Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?
      -- _2 Henry IV_, II, iii
%
KING HENRY IV: Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, III, i
%
KING HENRY IV: O God! that one might read the book of fate,
 And see the revolution of the times
 Make mountains level, and the continent,
 Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
 Into the sea!
      -- _2 Henry IV_, III, i
%
KING HENRY IV: O, if this were seen,
 The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,
 What perils past, what crosses to ensue,
 Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, III, i
%
FALSTAFF: We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, III, ii
%
MOWBRAY: We shall be winnow'd with so rough a wind
 That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff
 And good from bad find no partition.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, IV, i
%
KING HENRY IV: Chide him for faults, and do it reverently,
 When thou perceive his blood inclined to mirth;
 But, being moody, give him line and scope,
 Till that his passions, like a whale on ground,
 Confound themselves with working.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, IV, iv
%
KING HENRY IV: The blood weeps from my heart when I do shape
 In forms imaginary the unguided days
 And rotten times that you shall look upon
 When I am sleeping with my ancestors.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, IV, iv
%
CLARENCE: The incessant care and labour of his mind
 Hath wrought the mure that should confine it in
 So thin that life looks through and will break out.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, IV, iv
%
KING HENRY IV: For this the foolish over-careful fathers
 Have broke their sleep with thoughts, their brains with care,
 Their bones with industry;
 For this they have engrossed and piled up
 The canker'd heaps of strange-achieved gold;
 For this they have been thoughtful to invest
 Their sons with arts and martial exercises:
 When, like the bee, culling from every flower
 The virtuous sweets,
 Our thighs pack'd with wax, our mouths with honey,
 We bring it to the hive, and, like the bees,
 Are murdered for our pains.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, IV, v
%
KING HENRY IV: Thou hidest a thousand daggers in thy thoughts,
 Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart,
 To stab at half an hour of my life.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, IV, v
%
KING HENRY IV: Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
 With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,
 May waste the memory of the former days.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, IV, v
%
    FALSTAFF: My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!
    KING HENRY V: I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, V, v
%
KING HENRY V: How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
 I have long dream'd of such a kind of man,
 So surfeit-swell'd, so old and so profane;
 But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.
 Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
 Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
 For thee thrice wider than for other men.
 Reply not to me with a fool-born jest:
 Presume not that I am the thing I was;
 For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
 That I have turn'd away my former self;
 So will I those that kept me company.
      -- _2 Henry IV_, V, v
%
CHORUS: O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
 The brightest heaven of invention,
 A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
 And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.
      -- _Henry V_, Prologue
%
CHORUS: Can this cockpit hold
 The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
 Within this wooden O the very casques
 That did affright the air at Agincourt?
      -- _Henry V_, Prologue
%
CHORUS: O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
 Attest in little place a million;
 And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
 On your imaginary forces work.
      -- _Henry V_, Prologue
%
ELY: The strawberry grows underneath the nettle
 And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
 Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality.
      -- _Henry V_, I, i
%
KING HENRY V: Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,
 How you awake our sleeping sword of war.
 We charge you in the name of God take heed,
 For never two such kingdoms did contend
 Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops
 Are every one a woe, a sore complaint
 'Gainst him whose wrong gives edge unto the swords
 That make such waste in brief mortality.
      -- _Henry V_, I, ii
%
CANTERBURY: To fill King Edward's fame with prisoner kings
 And make her chronicle as rich with praise
 As is the ooze and bottom of the sea
 With sunken wreck and sunless treasuries.
      -- _Henry V_, I, ii
%
WESTMORELAND: For once the eagle England being in prey,
 To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot
 Comes sneaking and so sucks her princely eggs,
 Playing the mouse in absence of the cat,
 To tear and havoc more than she can eat.
      -- _Henry V_, I, ii
%
CANTERBURY: For so work the honey-bees,
 Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
 The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
 They have a king, and officers of sorts,
 Where some like magistrates correct at home,
 Others like merchants venture trade abroad,
 Others like soldiers, armed in their stings,
 Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds,
 Which pillage they with merry march bring home
 To the tent-royal of their emperor,
 Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
 The singing masons building roofs of gold,
 The civil citizens kneading up the honey,
 The poor mechanic porters crowding in
 Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,
 The sad-eyed justice with his surly hum
 Delivering o'er to executors pale
 The lazy yawning drone.
      -- _Henry V_, I, ii
%
    FIRST AMBASSADOR: He therefore sends you, meeter for your spirit,
     This tun of treasure; and, in lieu of this,
     Desires you let the dukedoms that you claim
     Hear no more of you. This the Dauphin speaks.
    KING HENRY V: What treasure, uncle?
    EXETER: Tennis-balls, my liege.
      -- _Henry V_, I, ii
%
KING HENRY V: When we have match'd our rackets to these balls,
 We will in France, by God's grace, play a set
 Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.
 Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler
 That all the courts of France will be disturb'd
 With chases.
      -- _Henry V_, I, ii
%
KING HENRY V: For many a thousand widows
 Shall this his mock mock out of their dear husbands;
 Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down;
 And some are yet ungotten and unborn
 That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin's scorn.
      -- _Henry V_, I, ii
%
KING HENRY V: So get you hence in peace; and tell the Dauphin
 His jest will savour but of shallow wit,
 When thousands weep more than did laugh at it.
      -- _Henry V_, I, ii
%
CHORUS: Now all the youth of England are on fire,
 And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies.
      -- _Henry V_, II, Prologue
%
CHORUS: O England: model to thy inward greatness,
 Like little body with a mighty heart,
 What mightst thou do, that honour would thee do,
 Were all thy children kind and natural?
      -- _Henry V_, II, Prologue
%
BEDFORD: The king hath note of all that they intend,
 By interception which they dream not of.
      -- _Henry V_, II, ii
%
KING HENRY V: If little faults, proceeding on distemper,
 Shall not be wink'd at, how shall we stretch our eye
 When capital crimes, chew'd, swallow'd and digested,
 Appear before us?
      -- _Henry V_, II, ii
%
    BARDOLPH: Would I were with him, wheresome're he is, either in heaven or in
hell.
    HOSTESS: Nay, sure, he's not in hell. He's in Arthur's bosom if ever man
went to Arthur's bosom.
      -- _Henry V_, II, iii
%
HOSTESS: A' made a finer end and went away an it had been any christom child;
a' parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning o' the tide,
for after I saw him fumble with the sheets and play with flowers and smile upon
his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a
pen, and a' babbled of green fields.
      -- _Henry V_, II, iii
%
DAUPHIN: Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin
 As self-neglecting.
      -- _Henry V_, II, iv
%
EXETER: Therefore in fierce tempest is he coming,
 In thunder and in earthquake, like a Jove,
 That, if requiring fail, he will compel;
 And bids you, in the bowels of the Lord,
 Deliver up the crown, and to take mercy
 On the poor souls for whom this hungry war
 Opens his vasty jaws; and on your head
 Turning the widows' tears, the orphans' cries
 The dead men's blood, the pining maidens groans,
 For husbands, fathers and betrothed lovers,
 That shall be swallow'd in this controversy.
      -- _Henry V_, II, iv
%
CHORUS: Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies
 In motion of no less celerity
 Than that of thought.
      -- _Henry V_, III, Prologue
%
KING HENRY V: Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
 Or close the wall up with our English dead!
      -- _Henry V_, III, i
%
KING HENRY V: 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 action of the tiger:
 Stiffen the sinews, conjure up the blood,
 Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage.
      -- _Henry V_, III, i
%
KING HENRY V: Let us swear
 That you are worth your breeding, which I doubt not,
 For there is none of you so mean and base,
 That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
      -- _Henry V_, III, i
%
KING HENRY V: I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
 Straining upon the start. The game's afoot.
      -- _Henry V_, III, i
%
KING HENRY V: Take pity of your town and of your people,
 Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
 Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
 O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
 Of heady murder, spoil and villainy.
 If not, why, in a moment look to see
 The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
 Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
 Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
 And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
 Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
 Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
 Do break the clouds...
      -- _Henry V_, III, iv
%
FLUELLEN: By your patience, Aunchient Pistol. Fortune is painted blind, with a
muffler afore her eyes, to signify to you that Fortune is blind; and she is
painted also with a wheel, to signify to you, which is the moral of it, that
she is turning, and inconstant, and mutability, and variation: and her foot,
look you, is fixed upon a spherical stone, which rolls, and rolls, and rolls:
in good truth, the poet makes a most excellent description of it. Fortune is an
excellent moral.
      -- _Henry V_, III, vii
%
KING HENRY V: For when lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler
gamester is the soonest winner.
      -- _Henry V_, III, vii
%
DAUPHIN: I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns.
Ca, ha! he bounds from the earth, as if his entrails were hairs; _le cheval
volant_, the Pegasus, _chez les narines de feu_! When I bestride him, I soar, I
am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest
horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.
      -- _Henry V_, III, viii
%
    CONSTABLE: Doing is activity; and he will still be doing.
    ORLEANS: He never did harm, that I heard of.
    CONSTABLE: Nor will do none to-morrow: he will keep that good name still.
      -- _Henry V_, III, viii
%
CHORUS: Now entertain conjecture of a time
 When creeping murmur and the poring dark
 Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
      -- _Henry V_, IV, Prologue
%
    GOWER: Why, the enemy is loud; you hear him all night.
    FLUELLEN: If the enemy is an ass and a fool and a prating coxcomb, is it
meet, think you, that we should also, look you, be an ass and a fool and a
prating coxcomb? in your own conscience, now?
      -- _Henry V_, IV, i
%
WILLIAMS: But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning
to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall
join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some
swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind
them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.
      -- _Henry V_, IV, i
%
KING HENRY V: What infinite heart's-ease
 Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy!
 And what have kings, that privates have not too,
 Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
 And what art thou, thou idle ceremony?
      -- _Henry V_, IV, i
%
KING HENRY V: No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
 Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
 Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,
 Who with a body fill'd and vacant mind
 Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread;
 Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,
 But, like a lackey, from the rise to set
 Sweats in the eye of Phoebus and all night
 Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,
 Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,
 And follows so the ever-running year,
 With profitable labour, to his grave:
      -- _Henry V_, IV, i
%
KING HENRY V: O God of battles! steel my soldiers' hearts;
 Possess them not with fear; take from them now
 The sense of reckoning, if the opposed numbers
 Pluck their hearts from them.
      -- _Henry V_, IV, i
%
KING HENRY V: Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
 That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
 Let him depart; his passport shall be made
 And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
 We would not die in that man's company
 That fears his fellowship to die with us.
      -- _Henry V_, IV, i
%
KING HENRY V: This day is called the feast of Crispian:
 He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
 Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
 And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
 He that shall live this day, and see old age,
 Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
 And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
 Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
 And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
 Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
 But he'll remember with advantages
 What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
 Familiar in his mouth as household words
 Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
 Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
 Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
 This story shall the good man teach his son;
 And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
 From this day to the ending of the world,
 But we in it shall be remember'd.
      -- _Henry V_, IV, iii
%
KING HENRY V: We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
 For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
 Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
 This day shall gentle his condition:
 And gentlemen in England now a-bed
 Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
 And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
 That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
      -- _Henry V_, IV, iii
%
BOURBON: The devil take order now! I'll to the throng:
 Let life be short; else shame will be too long.
      -- _Henry V_, IV, v
%
BURGUNDY: Llet it not disgrace me,
 If I demand, before this royal view,
 What rub or what impediment there is,
 Why that the naked, poor and mangled Peace,
 Dear nurse of arts and joyful births,
 Should not in this best garden of the world
 Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?
      -- _Henry V_, V, ii
%
KATHARINE: _O bon Dieu! les langues des hommes sont pleines de tromperies._
      -- _Henry V_, V, ii
%
KING HENRY V: If thou canst love me for this, take me. If not, to say to thee
that I shall die, is true, but for thy love, by the Lord, no. Yet I love thee
too.
      -- _Henry V_,
%
KING HENRY V: A speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg
will fall; a straight back will stoop; a black beard will turn white; a curled
pate will grow bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax hollow: but a
good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the
moon; for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly.
      -- _Henry V_, V, ii
%
KING HENRY V: But, good Kate, mock me mercifully, the rather, gentle princess,
because I love thee cruelly.
      -- _Henry V_, V, ii
%
KING HENRY V: O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear Kate, you and I
cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashion. We are the
makers of manners, Kate, and the liberty that follows our places stops the
mouth of all find-faults.
      -- _Henry V_, V, ii
%
KING HENRY V: You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate.
      -- _Henry V_, V, ii
%
CHORUS: Thus far, with rough and all-unable pen,
 Our bending author hath pursued the story,
 In little room confining mighty men,
 Mangling by starts the full course of their glory.
      -- _Henry V_, V, iii
%
CHORUS: Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown'd King
 Of France and England, did this king succeed;
 Whose state so many had the managing,
 That they lost France and made his England bleed.
      -- _Henry V_, V, iii
%
MARULLUS: You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
 O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
 Knew you not Pompey?
      -- _Julius Caesar_, I, i
%
MARULLUS: And do you now put on your best attire?
 And do you now cull out a holiday?
 And do you now strew flowers in his way
 That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood?
      -- _Julius Caesar_, I, i
%
SOOTHSAYER: Beware the ides of March.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, I, ii
%
    CASSIUS: Tell me, good Brutus, can you see your face?
    BRUTUS: No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself,
     But by reflection, by some other things.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, I, ii
%
CASSIUS: I had as lief not be as live to be
 In awe of such a thing as I myself.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, I, ii
%
CASSIUS: 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.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, I, ii
%
CASSIUS: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
 But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, I, ii
%
CAESAR: 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.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, I, ii
%
CAESAR: Such men as he be never at heart's ease
 Whiles they behold a greater than themselves,
 And therefore are they very dangerous.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, I, ii
%
CASCA: But those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their
heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, I, ii
%
CASCA: Are not you moved, when all the sway of earth
 Shakes like a thing unfirm?
      -- _Julius Caesar_, I, iii
%
CICERO: Indeed, it is a strange-disposed time:
 But men may construe things after their fashion,
 Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, I, iii
%
CASSIUS: For my part, I have walk'd about the streets,
 Submitting me unto the perilous night,
 And, thus unbraced, Casca, as you see,
 Have bared my bosom to the thunder-stone;
 And when the cross blue lightning seem'd to open
 The breast of heaven, I did present myself
 Even in the aim and very flash of it.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, I, iii
%
BRUTUS: Look in the calendar, and bring me word.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, II, i
%
BRUTUS: Between the acting of a dreadful thing
 And the first motion, all the interim is
 Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, II, i
%
BRUTUS: The genius and the mortal instruments
 Are then in council, and the state of man,
 Like to a little kingdom, suffers then
 The nature of an insurrection.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, II, i
%
BRUTUS: O conspiracy,
 Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night,
 When evils are most free? O, then by day
 Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough
 To mask thy monstrous visage?
      -- _Julius Caesar_, II, i
%
Stage direction: Clock strikes.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, II, i
%
BRUTUS: Thou hast no figures nor no fantasies,
 Which busy care draws in the brains of men;
 Therefore thou sleep'st so sound.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, II, i
%
CAESAR: What can be avoided
 Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?
      -- _Julius Caesar_, II, ii
%
CALPURNIA: When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
 The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, II, ii
%
CAESAR: Cowards die many times before their deaths;
 The valiant never taste of death but once.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, II, ii
%
CAESAR: 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, ii
%
TREBONIUS: Caesar, I will.
 Aside: And so near will I be,
 That your best friends shall wish I had been further.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, II, ii
%
CASSIUS: But I am constant as the northern star,
 Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality
 There is no fellow in the firmament.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, III, i
%
CASSIUS: The skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks,
 They are all fire and every one doth shine,
 But there's but one in all doth hold his place.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, III, i
%
BRUTUS: Fates, we will know your pleasures:
 That we shall die, we know; 'tis but the time
 And drawing days out, that men stand upon.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, III, i
%
ANTONY: O mighty Caesar! dost thou lie so low?
 Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
 Shrunk to this little measure?
      -- _Julius Caesar_, III, i
%
ANTONY: The choice and master spirits of this age.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, III, i
%
ANTONY: And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
 With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
 Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
 Cry "Havoc," and let slip the dogs of war.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, III, i
%
BRUTUS: If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my
answer: Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, III, ii
%
ANTONY: Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, III, ii
%
ANTONY: I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
 The evil that men do lives after them;
 The good is oft interred with their bones;
 So let it be with Caesar.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, III, ii
%
ANTONY: When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept;
 Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, III, ii
%
ANTONY Bear with me;
 My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
 And I must pause till it come back to me.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, III, ii
%
ANTONY: This was the most unkindest cut of all.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, III, ii
%
ANTONY: For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
 Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms,
 Quite vanquish'd him.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, III, ii
%
ANTONY: Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot,
 Take thou what course thou wilt.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, III, ii
%
    CINNA THE POET: Truly, my name is Cinna.
    FIRST CITIZEN: Tear him to pieces! He's a conspirator.
    CINNA THE POET: I am Cinna the poet! I am Cinna the poet!
    FOURTH CITIZEN: Tear him for his bad verses! Tear him for his bad verses!
      -- _Julius Caesar_, III, iii
%
OCTAVIUS: Let us do so: for we are at the stake,
 And bay'd about with many enemies;
 And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear,
 Millions of mischiefs.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, IV, i
%
BRUTUS: When love begins to sicken and decay,
 It useth an enforced ceremony.
 There are no tricks in plain and simple faith;
 But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,
 Make gallant show and promise of their mettle.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, IV, ii
%
BRUTUS: 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.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, IV, ii
%
CASSIUS: For Cassius is aweary of the world;
 Hated by one he loves; braved by his brother;
 Cheque'd like a bondman; all his faults observed,
 Set in a note-book, learn'd, and conn'd by rote,
 To cast into my teeth.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, IV, iii
%
BRUTUS: For ever, and for ever, farewell, Cassius!
 If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
 If not, why then, this parting was well made.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, V, i
%
BRUTUS: O, that a man might know
 The end of this day's business ere it come!
 But it sufficeth that the day will end,
 And then the end is known.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, V, i
%
CASSIUS: This day I breathed first: time is come round,
 And where I did begin, there shall I end;
 My life is run his compass.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, V, iii
%
ANTONY: This was the noblest Roman of them all.
      -- _Julius Caesar_, V, v
%
ANTONY: 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!"
      -- _Julius Caesar_, V, v
%
CELIA: Well said: that was laid on with a trowel.
      -- _As You Like It_, I, ii
%
ORLANDO: Only in the world I fill up a place, which may be better supplied when
I have made it empty.
      -- _As You Like It_, I, ii
%
ROSALIND: My pride fell with my fortune.
      -- _As You Like It_, I, ii
%
ROSALIND: O, how full of briers is this working-day world!
      -- _As You Like It_, I, iii
%
ROSALIND: Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.
      -- _As You Like It_, I, iii
%
DUKE SENIOR: And this our life exempt from public haunt
 Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
 Sermons in stones and good in every thing.
      -- _As You Like It_, II, i
%
ORLANDO: Thou art not for the fashion of these times,
 Where none will sweat but for promotion.
      -- _As You Like It_, II, iii
%
TOUCHSTONE: Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I. When I was at home I was in
a better place, but travellers must be content.
      -- _As You Like It_, II, iv
%
JAQUES: I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs.
      -- _As You Like It_, II, v
%
DUKE SENIOR: If he, compact of jars, grow musical,
 We shall have shortly discord in the spheres.
      -- _As You Like It_, II, vii
%
JAQUES: 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.'
      -- _As You Like It_, II, vii
%
JAQUES: 'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine,
 And after one hour more 'twill be eleven;
 And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
 And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot.
      -- _As You Like It_, II, vii
%
JAQUES: And thereby hangs a tale.
      -- _As You Like It_, II, vii
%
DUKE SENIOR: True is it that we have seen better days.
      -- _As You Like It_, II, vii
%
JAQUES: And in his brain,
 Which is as dry as the remainder biscuit
 After a voyage, he hath strange places crammed
 With observation, the which he vents
 In mangled forms.
      -- _As You Like It_, II, vii
%
JAQUES: 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.
      -- _As You Like It_, II, vii
%
JAQUES: At first the infant,
 Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
      -- _As You Like It_, II, vii
%
JAQUES: And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
 And shining morning face, creeping like snail
 Unwillingly to school.
      -- _As You Like It_, II, vii
%
JAQUES: 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.
      -- _As You Like It_, II, vii
%
JAQUES: 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.
      -- _As You Like It_, II, vii
%
JAQUES: Last scene of all,
 That ends this strange eventful history,
 Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
 Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
      -- _As You Like It_, II, vii
%
CORIN: No more but that I know the more one sickens the worse at ease he is;
and that he that wants money, means and content is without three good friends;
that the property of rain is to wet and fire to burn; that good pasture makes
fat sheep and that a great cause of the night is lack of the sun; that he that
hath learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of good breeding or comes of
a very dull kindred.
      -- _As You Like It_, III, ii
%
TOUCHSTONE: When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit
seconded with the forward child Understanding, it strikes a man more dead than
a great reckoning in a little room.
      -- _As You Like It_, III, iii
%
ROSALIND: 'Tis such fools as you
 That makes the world full of ill-favour'd children.
      -- _As You Like It_, III, v
%
    JAQUES: Why, 'tis good to be sad and say nothing.
    ROSALIND: Why then, 'tis good to be a post.
      -- _As You Like It_, IV, i
%
JAQUES: I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation, nor the
musician's, which is fantastical, nor the courtier's, which is proud, nor the
soldier's, which is ambitious, nor the lawyer's, which is politic, nor the
lady's, which is nice, nor the lover's, which is all these; but 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.
      -- _As You Like It_, IV, i
%
ROSALIND: A traveller! By my faith, you have great reason to be sad. I fear you
have sold your own lands to see other men's.
      -- _As You Like It_, IV, i
%
ROSALIND: Am not I your Rosalind?
      -- _As You Like It_, IV, i
%
ORLANDO: For ever and a day.
      -- _As You Like It_, IV, i
%
ROSALIND: I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I will do
that when you are disposed to be merry; I will laugh like a hyena, and that
when thou art inclined to sleep.
      -- _As You Like It_, IV, i
%
TOUCHSTONE: Your If is the only peacemaker; much virtue in If.
      -- _As You Like It_, V, iv
%
    BERNARDO: Have you had quiet guard?
    FRANCISCO: Not a mouse stirring.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, i
%
HORATIO: But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again!
 I'll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion!
      -- _Hamlet_, I, i
%
HORATIO: If there be any good thing to be done,
 That may to thee do ease and grace to me,
 Speak to me!
      -- _Hamlet_, I, i
%
MARCELLUS: Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
 Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
 This 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.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, i
%
CLAUDIUS: The head is not more native to the heart,
 The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
 Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, ii
%
HAMLET: A little more than kin, and less than kind.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, ii
%
GERTRUDE: Do not forever with thy vailed lids
 Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
 Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die,
 Passing through nature to eternity.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, ii
%
HAMLET: Ay, madam, it is common.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, ii
%
HAMLET: 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 of this world!
 Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
 That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
 Possess it merely.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, ii
%
HAMLET: That it should come to this!
 But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
 So excellent a king; that was, to this,
 Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
 That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
 Visit her face too roughly.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, ii
%
HAMLET: Let me not think on't -- Frailty, thy name is woman!
      -- _Hamlet_, I, ii
%
    HAMLET: My father! -- methinks I see my father.
    HORATIO: Where, my lord?
    HAMLET: In my mind's eye, Horatio.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, ii
%
    HORATIO: I saw him once; he was a goodly king.
    HAMLET: He was a man. Take him for all in all,
     I shall not look upon his like again.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, ii
%
HAMLET: Foul deeds will rise,
 Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, ii
%
LAERTES: Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister,
 And keep you in the rear of your affection,
 Out of the shot and danger of desire.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, iii
%
POLONIUS: Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
 But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
 For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, iii
%
POLONIUS: Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
 For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
 And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, iii
%
POLONIUS: This above all: to thine ownself be true,
 And it must follow, as the night the day,
 Thou canst not then be false to any man.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, iii
%
HAMLET: But to my mind, though I am native here
 And to the manner born, it is a custom
 More honour'd in the breach than the observance.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, iv
%
HAMLET: Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
      -- _Hamlet_, I, iv
%
HAMLET: Thou comest in such a questionable shape
 That I will speak to thee.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, iv
%
MARCELLUS: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, iv
%
GHOST: But that I am forbid
 To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
 I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
 Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
 Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
 Thy knotted and combined locks to part
 And each particular hair to stand on end,
 Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, v
%
GHOST: Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
 But this most foul, strange and unnatural.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, v
%
HAMLET: O my prophetic soul!
      -- _Hamlet_, I, v
%
HAMLET: Remember thee!
 Yea, from the table of my memory
 I'll wipe away all trivial fond records.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, v
%
HAMLET: There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
 Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
      -- _Hamlet_, I, v
%
HAMLET: The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
 That ever I was born to set it right!
      -- _Hamlet_, I, v
%
POLONIUS: And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
 With windlasses and with assays of bias,
 By indirections find directions out.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, i
%
POLONIUS: My liege, and madam, to expostulate
 What majesty should be, what duty is,
 Why day is day, night night, and time is time,
 Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
POLONIUS: Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
 And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
 I will be brief: your noble son is mad.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
GERTRUDE: More matter, with less art.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
POLONIUS: That he is mad, 'tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity;
 And pity 'tis 'tis true.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
HAMLET: O dear Ophelia, I am ill at these numbers; I have not art to reckon my
groans.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
POLONIUS: If circumstances lead me, I will find
 Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
 Within the centre.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
    POLONIUS: What do you read, my lord?
    HAMLET: Words, words, words.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
    POLONIUS: Will you walk out of the air, my lord?
    HAMLET: Into my grave.
    POLONIUS: Indeed, that is out o' the air.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
    HAMLET: What's the news?
    ROSENCRANTZ: None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.
    HAMLET: Then is doomsday near.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
HAMLET: Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing
 either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
HAMLET: O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of
infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
HAMLET: I have of late -- but wherefore I know not -- lost all my mirth,
forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my
disposition that 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 pestilent congregation of vapours.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
HAMLET: What a piece of work is a 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! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
HAMLET: Man delights not me -- no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
HAMLET: I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk
from a handsaw.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
POLONIUS: The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history,
pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical,
tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited:
Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the
liberty, these are the only men.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
HAMLET: For the play, I remember, pleased not the million; 'twas caviare to the
general.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
HAMLET: Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let
them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time:
after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while
you live.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
    POLONIUS: My lord, I will use them according to their desert.
    HAMLET: God's bodikin, man, much better. Use every man after his desert,
and who shall 'scape whipping?
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
HAMLET: Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less they deserve, the
more merit is in your bounty.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
HAMLET: What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
 That he should weep for her?
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
HAMLET: For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
 With most miraculous organ.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
HAMLET: The play's the thing
 Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
      -- _Hamlet_, II, ii
%
HAMLET: To be, or not to be: that is the question.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, i
%
HAMLET: Whether 'tis 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.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, i
%
HAMLET: To die: to sleep;
 No more; and by a sleep to say we end
 The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
 That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
 Devoutly to be wish'd.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, i
%
HAMLET: 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.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, i
%
HAMLET: 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?
      -- _Hamlet_, III, i
%
HAMLET: 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?
      -- _Hamlet_, III, i
%
HAMLET: Nymph, in thy orisons
 Be all my sins remember'd.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, i
%
OPHELIA: Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, i
%
HAMLET: Get thee to a nunnery.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, i
%
HAMLET: What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We
are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, i
%
HAMLET: I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one
face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and
nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, i
%
OPHELIA: O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
      -- _Hamlet_, III, i
%
CLAUDIUS: Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, i
%
HAMLET: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to
 you, trippingly on the tongue.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, ii
%
HAMLET: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it
out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, ii
%
HAMLET: Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special
observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, ii
%
HAMLET: For any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end,
both at the first and now, was and is to hold as 'twere the mirror up to
nature, to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and
body of the time his form and pressure.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, ii
%
HAMLET: Give me that man
 That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
 In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
 As I do thee.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, ii
%
    HAMLET: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
    OPHELIA: No, my lord.
    HAMLET: I mean, my head upon your lap?
    OPHELIA: Ay, my lord.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, ii
%
    HAMLET: Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?
    OPHELIA: 'Tis brief, my lord.
    HAMLET: As woman's love.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, ii
%
PLAYER QUEEN: Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
 Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, ii
%
PLAYER KING: Purpose is but the slave to memory.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, ii
%
GERTRUDE: The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, ii
%
HORATIO: You might have rhymed.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, ii
%
HAMLET: You would play upon me, you would seem to know my stops, you would
pluck out the heart of my mystery, you would sound me from my lowest note to
the top of my compass, and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little
organ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be
played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret
me, you cannot play upon me.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, ii
%
HAMLET: For some must watch, while some must sleep:
 So runs the world away.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, ii
%
HAMLET: 'Tis now the very witching time of night,
 When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
 Contagion to this world.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, ii
%
ROSENCRANTZ: The cess of majesty
 Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw
 What's near it with it.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, iii
%
CLAUDIUS: In the corrupted currents of this world
 Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
 And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
 Buys out the law: but 'tis not so above.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, iii
%
GERTRUDE: This is the very coinage of your brain.
 This bodiless creation ecstasy
 Is very cunning in.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, iv
%
HAMLET: I must be cruel, only to be kind.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, iv
%
HAMLET: Let it work.
 For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
 Hoist with his own petard, and 't shall go hard.
      -- _Hamlet_, III, iv
%
    CLAUDIUS: What, Gertrude? How does Hamlet?
    GERTRUDE: Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend
     Which is the mightier.
      -- _Hamlet_, IV, i
%
    CLAUDIUS: Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?
    HAMLET: At supper.
    CLAUDIUS: At supper? Where?
    HAMLET: Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of
politic worms are e'en at him.
      -- _Hamlet_, IV, iii
%
HAMLET: Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to
fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is
but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end.
      -- _Hamlet_, IV, iii
%
    CLAUDIUS: Where is Polonius?
    HAMLET: In heaven; send hither to see: if your messenger find him not
there, seek him i' the other place yourself.
      -- _Hamlet_, IV, iv
%
HAMLET: How all occasions do inform against me,
 And spur my dull revenge!
      -- _Hamlet_, IV, iv
%
HAMLET: What is a man,
 If his chief good and market of his time
 Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
 Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
 Looking before and after, gave us not
 That capability and godlike reason
 To fust in us unused.
      -- _Hamlet_, IV, iv
%
HAMLET: How stand I then,
 That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
 Excitements of my reason and my blood,
 And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
 The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
 That for a fantasy and trick of fame
 Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
 Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
 Which is not tomb enough and continent
 To hide the slain?
      -- _Hamlet_, IV, iv
%
GENTLEMAN: Her speech is nothing,
 Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
 The hearers to collection; they yawn at it,
 And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts.
      -- _Hamlet_, IV, v
%
GERTRUDE: So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
 It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
      -- _Hamlet_, IV, v
%
CLAUDIUS: When sorrows come, they come not single spies
 But in battalions.
      -- _Hamlet_, IV, v
%
OPHELIA: There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember. And
there is pansies; that's for thoughts.
      -- _Hamlet_, IV, v
%
OPHELIA: There's a daisy, I would give you some violets, but they withered all
when my father died.
      -- _Hamlet_, IV, v
%
    FIRST CLOWN: What is he that builds stronger than either the mason, the
shipwright, or the carpenter?
    SECOND CLOWN: The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a thousand
tenants.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, i
%
HAMLET: The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, i
%
    HAMLET: Whose grave's this, sirrah?
    FIRST CLOWN: Mine, sir.
    HAMLET: I think it be thine, indeed; for thou liest in't.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, i
%
    FIRST CLOWN: It was the very day that young Hamlet was born; he that is
mad, and sent into England.
    HAMLET: Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?
    FIRST CLOWN: Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there; or,
if he do not, it's no great matter there.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, i
%
HAMLET: Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of
most excellent fancy.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, i
%
HAMLET: Where be your gibes now? Your gambols, your songs, your flashes of
merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your
own grinning? Quite chopfallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber and tell her,
let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at
that.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, i
%
GERTRUDE: Sweets to the sweet: farewell!
      -- _Hamlet_, V, i
%
HAMLET: I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, i
%
HAMLET: Let Hercules himself do what he may,
 The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, i
%
HAMLET: There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
 Rough-hew them how we will.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
HAMLET: I once did hold it, as our statists do,
 A baseness to write fair, and labour'd much
 How to forget that learning, but, sir, now
 It did me yeoman's service.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
HAMLET: 'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes
 Between the pass and fell incensed points
 Of mighty opposites.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
HAMLET: There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
HAMLET: If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now;
if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
CLAUDIUS: Give me the cups;
 And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,
 The trumpet to the cannoneer without,
 The cannons to the heavens, the heaven to earth,
 "Now the king drinks to Hamlet." Come, begin.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
OSRIC: A hit, a very palpable hit.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
HAMLET: Had I but time -- as this fell sergeant, death,
 Is strict in his arrest -- O, I could tell you --
 But let it be.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
HAMLET: Horatio, I am dead;
 Thou livest; report me and my cause aright
 To the unsatisfied.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
HAMLET: If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
 Absent thee from felicity awhile,
 And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
 To tell my story.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
HAMLET: The rest is silence.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
HORATIO: Now cracks a noble heart.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
HORATIO: Good night sweet prince,
 And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
      -- _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
FIRST AMBASSADOR: The ears are senseless that should give us hearing,
 To tell him his commandment is fulfill'd,
 That Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
HORATIO: And let me speak to the yet unknowing world
 How these things came about: so shall you hear
 Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,
 Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,
 Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,
 And, in this upshot, purposes mistook
 Fall'n on the inventors' reads: all this can I
 Truly deliver.
      -- _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
FORTINBRAS: Go bid the soldiers shoot.
      -- Last line of _Hamlet_, V, ii
%
ORSINO: If music be the food of love, play on;
 Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
 The appetite may sicken and so die.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, I, i
%
SIR TOBY: I am sure care's an enemy to life.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, I, iii
%
SIR ANDREW: But I am a great eater of beef and I believe that does harm to my
wit.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, I, iii
%
FESTE: Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let
them use their talents.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, I, v
%
FESTE: O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
 O, stay and hear; your true love's coming.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, II, iii
%
FESTE: What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
 Present mirth hath present laughter;
 What's to come is still unsure:
 In delay there lies no plenty;
 Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
 Youth's a stuff will not endure.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, II, iii
%
SIR TOBY: Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more
cakes and ale?
      -- _Twelfth Night_, II, iii
%
ORSINO: For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
 Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
 More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
 Than women's are.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, II, iv
%
VIOLA: I am all the daughters of my father's house,
 And all the brothers too.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, II, iv
%
MALVOLIO: 'Tis but fortune; all is fortune.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, II, v
%
MALVOLIO: (Reading) But be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some
achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, II, v
%
    VIOLA: Thy reason, man?
    FESTE: Troth, sir, I can yield you none without words; and words are grown
so false, I am loath to prove reason with them.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, III, i
%
FESTE: Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines
everywhere.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, III, i
%
OLIVIA: The clock upbraids me with the waste of time.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, III, i
%
VIOLA: Then westward ho!
      -- _Twelfth Night_, III, i
%
OLIVIA: Why, this is very midsummer madness.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, III, iv
%
FESTE: And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, V, i
%
MALVOLIO: I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you!
      -- _Twelfth Night_, V, i
%
FESTE: When that I was and a little tiny boy,
 With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
 A foolish thing was but a toy,
 For the rain it raineth every day.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, V, i
%
FESTE: A great while ago the world begun,
 With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
 But that's all one, our play is done,
 And we'll strive to please you every day.
      -- _Twelfth Night_, V, i
%
LAFEU: He hath abandoned his physicians, madam; under whose practises he hath
persecuted time with hope, and finds no other advantage in the process but only
the losing of hope by time.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, I, i
%
LAFEU: He was excellent indeed, madam: the king very lately spoke of him
admiringly and mourningly: he was skilful enough to have lived still, if
knowledge could be set up against mortality.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, I, i
%
LAFEU: Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy
to the living.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, I, i
%
HELENA: Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
 Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
 Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull
 Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, I, i
%
    COUNTESS: Tell me thy reason why thou wilt marry.
    CLOWN: My poor body, madam, requires it: I am driven on by the flesh; and
he must needs go that the devil drives.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, I, iii
%
    COUNTESS: Marry, that's a bountiful answer that fits all questions.
    Clown: It is like a barber's chair that fits all buttocks, the pin-buttock,
the quatch-buttock, the brawn buttock, or any buttock.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, II, ii
%
KING: Strange is it that our bloods,
 Of colour, weight, and heat, pour'd all together,
 Would quite confound distinction, yet stand off
 In differences so mighty.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, II, iii
%
LAFEU: Fare you well, my lord; and believe this of me, there can be no kernel
in this light nut; the soul of this man is his clothes.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, II, v
%
HELENA: (Reads) "But in such a 'then' I write a 'never.'" This is a dreadful
sentence.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, III, ii
%
COUNTESS: Grief would have tears, and sorrow bids me speak.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, III, iv
%
    PAROLLES: I love not many words.
    SECOND LORD: No more than a fish loves water.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, III, vi
%
FIRST LORD: The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together:
our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes
would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, IV, iii
%
    PAROLLES: My lord, I am a man whom fortune hath cruelly scratched.
    LAFEU: And what would you have me to do? 'Tis too late to pare her nails
now.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, V, ii
%
KING: Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, V, iii
%
KING: Let's take the instant by the forward top;
 For we are old, and on our quick'st decrees
 The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time
 Steals ere we can effect them.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, V, iii
%
KING: I am wrapp'd in dismal thinkings.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, V, iii
%
LAFEU: Mine eyes smell onions; I shall weep anon.
      -- _All's Well That Ends Well_, V, iii
%
    ALEXANDER: They say he is a very man _per se_, and stands alone.
    CRESSIDA: So do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have no legs.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, I, ii
%
CRESSIDA: Men prize the thing ungain'd more than it is.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, I, ii
%
ULYSSES: And appetite, an universal wolf,
 So doubly seconded with will and power,
 Must make perforce an universal prey,
 And last eat up himself.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, I, iii
%
ULYSSES: They tax our policy, and call it cowardice,
 Count wisdom as no member of the war,
 Forestall prescience, and esteem no act
 But that of hand. The still and mental parts,
 That do contrive how many hands shall strike
 When fitness calls them on, and know, by measure
 Of their observant toil, the enemies' weight--
 Why, this hath not a finger's dignity:
 They call this bed-work, mappery, closet-war;
 So that the ram that batters down the wall,
 For the great swing and rudeness of his poise,
 They place before his hand that made the engine,
 Or those that with the fineness of their souls
 By reason guide his execution.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, I, iii
%
TROILUS: Will you with counters sum
 The past proportion of his infinite?
 And buckle in a waist most fathomless
 With spans and inches so diminutive
 As fears and reasons? fie, for godly shame!
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, II, ii
%
ULYSSES: The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, II, iii
%
PANDARUS: Nay, I'll give my word for her too: our kindred, though they be long
ere they are wooed, they are constant being won: they are burs, I can tell you;
they'll stick where they are thrown.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, III, ii
%
CRESSIDA: When time is old and hath forgot itself,
 When waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
 And blind oblivion swallow'd cities up,
 And mighty states characterless are grated
 To dusty nothing, yet let memory,
 From false to false, among false maids in love,
 Upbraid my falsehood!
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, III, ii
%
ULYSSES: Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd
 As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
 As done.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, III, iii
%
ULYSSES: Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
 To envious and calumniating time.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, III, iii
%
ULYSSES: One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,
 That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,
 Though they are made and moulded of things past,
 And give to dust that is a little gilt
 More laud than gilt o'er-dusted.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, III, iii
%
THERSITES: A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather
jerkin.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, III, iii
%
PARIS: There is no help; the bitter disposition of the time will have it so.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, i
%
CRESSIDA: Time, force, and death,
 Do to this body what extremes you can;
 But the strong base and building of my love
 Is as the very centre of the earth,
 Drawing all things to it.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, ii
%
CRESSIDA: The grief is fine, full, perfect, that I taste,
 And violenteth in a sense as strong
 As that which causeth it.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, iv
%
TROILUS: But something may be done that we will not:
 And sometimes we are devils to ourselves.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, iv
%
TROILUS: Whiles others fish with craft for great opinion,
 I with great truth catch mere simplicity;
 Whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns,
 With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, iv
%
ACHILLES: 'Tis but early days.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, v
%
MENELAUS: An odd man, lady? Every man is odd.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, v
%
ULYSSES: There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip,
 Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out
 At every joint and motive of her body.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, v
%
ULYSSES: O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue,
 That give accosting welcome ere it comes,
 And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts
 To every ticklish reader!
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, v
%
AGAMEMNON: What's past and what's to come is strew'd with husks
 And formless ruin of oblivion.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, v
%
HECTOR: O, like a book of sport thou'lt read me o'er;
 But there's more in me than thou understand'st.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, v
%
ACHILLES: Tell me, you heavens, in which part of his body
 Shall I destroy him? whether there, or there, or there?
 That I may give the local wound a name
 And make distinct the very breach whereout
 Hector's great spirit flew: answer me, heavens!
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, v
%
ACHILLES: Thou crusty batch of nature, what's the news?
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, v
%
THERSITES: That same Diomed's a false-hearted rogue, a most unjust knave; I
will no more trust him when he leers than I will a serpent when he hisses. He
will spend his mouth, and promise, like Brabbler the hound; but when he
performs, astronomers foretell it: it is prodigious, there will come some
change; the sun borrows of the moon, when Diomed keeps his word.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, V, i
%
CRESSIDA: Hark, one word in your ear.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, V, ii
%
CRESSIDA: What error leads must err; O, then conclude
 Minds sway'd by eyes are full of turpitude.
      -- _Troilus and Cressida_, V, ii
%
IAGO: A fellow almost damn'd in a fair wife.
      -- _Othello_, I, i
%
IAGO: I follow him to serve my turn upon him:
 We cannot all be masters, nor all masters
 Cannot be truly follow'd.
      -- _Othello_, I, i
%
IAGO: Zounds, sir, you are one of those that will not serve God if the devil
bid you.
      -- _Othello_, I, i
%
IAGO: I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are now
making the beast with two backs.
      -- _Othello_, I, i
%
    BRABANTIO: Thou art a villain.
    IAGO: You are -- a senator.
      -- _Othello_, I, i
%
OTHELLO: Rude am I in my speech,
 And little bless'd with the soft phrase of peace.
      -- _Othello_, I, iii
%
OTHELLO: She swore, in faith, twas strange, 'twas passing strange,
 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful.
      -- _Othello_, I, iii
%
OTHELLO: She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd,
 And I loved her that she did pity them.
      -- _Othello_, I, iii
%
DUKE OF VENICE: When remedies are past, the griefs are ended
 By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended.
      -- _Othello_, I, iii
%
DUKE OF VENICE: To mourn a mischief that is past and gone
 Is the next way to draw new mischief on.
      -- _Othello_, I, iii
%
BRABANTIO: But words are words; I never yet did hear
 That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear.
      -- _Othello_, I, iii
%
BRABANTIO: Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:
 She has deceived her father, and may thee.
      -- _Othello_, I, iii
%
IAGO: Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that
if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply
it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many, either to have it sterile
with idleness, or manured with industry -- why, the power and corrigible
authority of this lies in our wills.
      -- _Othello_, I, iii
%
IAGO: There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered.
      -- _Othello_, I, iii
%
IAGO: For I am nothing, if not critical.
      -- _Othello_, II, i
%
OTHELLO: Once more, well met at Cyprus!
      -- _Othello_, II, i
%
IAGO: But men are men; the best sometimes forget.
      -- _Othello_, II, iii
%
IAGO: Reputation is an idle and most false imposition: oft got without merit,
and lost without deserving: you have lost no reputation at all, unless you
repute yourself such a loser.
      -- _Othello_, II, iii
%
IAGO: When devils will the blackest sins put on,
 They do suggest at first with heavenly shows.
      -- _Othello_, II, iii
%
IAGO: So will I turn her virtue into pitch,
 And out of her own goodness make the net
 That shall enmesh them all.
      -- _Othello_, II, iii
%
IAGO: How poor are they that have not patience!
 What wound did ever heal but by degrees?
      -- _Othello_, II, iii
%
CLOWN: O, thereby hangs a tail.
      -- _Othello_, III, i
%
OTHELLO: Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul,
 But I do love thee! and when I love thee not,
 Chaos is come again.
      -- _Othello_, III, iii
%
OTHELLO: "Think, my lord?" By heaven, thou echo'st me,
 As if there were some monster in thy thought
 Too hideous to be shown.
      -- _Othello_, III, iii
%
IAGO: Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
 Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
 Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands:
 But he that filches from me my good name
 Robs me of that which not enriches him
 And makes me poor indeed.
      -- _Othello_, III, iii
%
IAGO: O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!
 It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
 The meat it feeds on.
      -- _Othello_, III, iii
%
IAGO: Poor and content is rich and rich enough.
      -- _Othello_, III, iii
%
OTHELLO: To be once in doubt is once to be resolved.
      -- _Othello_, III, iii
%
IAGO: Trifles light as air
 Are to the jealous confirmations strong
 As proofs of holy writ.
      -- _Othello_, III, iii
%
IAGO: Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons,
 Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,
 But with a little act upon the blood
 Burn like the mines of sulphur.
      -- _Othello_, III, iii
%
OTHELLO: O, now, for ever
 Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!
      -- _Othello_, III, iii
%
IAGO: O monstrous world! Take note, take note, O world,
 To be direct and honest is not safe.
      -- _Othello_, III, iii
%
OTHELLO: No, my heart is turned to
 stone; I strike it, and it hurts my hand.
      -- _Othello_, IV, i
%
    DESDEMONA: Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?
    EMILIA: The world's a huge thing: it is a great price.
     For a small vice.
      -- _Othello_, IV, iii
%
EMILIA: Let husbands know
 Their wives have sense like them: they see and smell
 And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
 As husbands have.
      -- _Othello_, IV, iii
%
IAGO: It makes us, or it mars us.
      -- _Othello_, V, i
%
OTHELLO: Put out the light, and then put out the light.
      -- _Othello_, V, ii
%
EMILIA: 'Twill out, 'twill out! I peace?
 No, I will speak as liberal as the north.
 Let heaven and men and devils, let them all,
 All, all, cry shame against me, yet I'll speak.
      -- _Othello_, V, ii
%
IAGO: Demand me nothing: what you know, you know:
 From this time forth I never will speak word.
      -- _Othello_, V, ii
%
OTHELLO: 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.
      -- _Othello_, V, ii
%
OTHELLO: Then must you speak
 Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
 Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,
 Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand,
 Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
 Richer than all his tribe.
      -- _Othello_, V, ii
%
DUKE: There is a kind of character in thy life,
 That to the observer doth thy history
 Fully unfold.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, I, i
%
DUKE: Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
 Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues
 Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
 As if we had them not.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, I, i
%
LUCIO: Thou concludest like the sanctimonious pirate, that went to sea with the
Ten Commandments, but scraped one out of the table.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, I, ii
%
    LUCIO: Why, how now, Claudio! whence comes this restraint?
    CLAUDIO: From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty:
     As surfeit is the father of much fast,
     So every scope by the immoderate use
     Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue,
     Like rats that ravin down their proper bane,
     A thirsty evil; and when we drink we die.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, I, ii
%
DUKE: We have strict statutes and most biting laws.
 The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, I, iii
%
DUKE: Hence shall we see, if power change purpose, what our seemers be.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, I, iii
%
LUCIO: Our doubts are traitors
 And make us lose the good we oft might win
 By fearing to attempt.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, I, iv
%
ISABELLA: O, it is excellent
 To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
 To use it like a giant.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, II, ii
%
CLAUDIO: The miserable have no other medicine but only hope.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, III, i
%
DUKE: Thou hast nor youth nor age,
 But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep,
 Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth
 Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms
 Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich,
 Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,
 To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this
 That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
 Lie hid moe thousand deaths: yet death we fear,
 That makes these odds all even.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, III, i
%
DUKE: There, at the moated grange, resides this dejected Mariana.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, III, i
%
DUKE: No might nor greatness in mortality
 Can censure 'scape; back-wounding calumny
 The whitest virtue strikes.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, III, ii
%
DUKE: There is scarce truth enough alive to make societies secure; but security
enough to make fellowships accurst: much upon this riddle runs the wisdom of
the world.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, III, ii
%
DUKE: This news is old enough, yet it is every day's news.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, III, ii
%
DUKE: Shame to him whose cruel striking
 Kills for faults of his own liking.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, III, ii
%
DUKE: O, what may man within him hide,
 Though angel on the outward side!
      -- _Measure for Measure_, III, ii
%
DUKE: Craft against vice I must apply.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, III, ii
%
DUKE: Put not yourself into amazement how these things should be: all
difficulties are but easy when they are known.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, IV, ii
%
POMPEY: Pray, Master Barnardine, awake till you are executed, and sleep
afterwards.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, IV, iii
%
DUKE: O, your desert speaks loud; and I should wrong it,
 To lock it in the wards of covert bosom,
 When it deserves, with characters of brass,
 A forted residence 'gainst the tooth of time
 And razure of oblivion.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, V, i
%
DUKE: Laws for all faults,
 But faults so countenanced, that the strong statutes
 Stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop,
 As much in mock as mark.
      -- _Measure for Measure_, V, i
%
LEAR: Know that we have divided
 In three our kingdom: and 'tis our fast intent
 To shake all cares and business from our age;
 Conferring them on younger strengths while we
 Unburthen'd crawl toward death.
      -- _King Lear_, I, i
%
    LEAR: Strive to be interess'd; what can you say to draw
     A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
    CORDELIA: Nothing, my lord.
    KING LEAR: Nothing?
    CORDELIA: Nothing.
    KING LEAR: Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.
      -- _King Lear_, I, i
%
LEAR: Come not between the dragon and his wrath.
      -- _King Lear_, I, i
%
FRANCE: Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor;
 Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised!
 Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon:
 Be it lawful I take up what's cast away.
      -- _King Lear_, I, i
%
REGAN: 'Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever
 but slenderly known himself.
      -- _King Lear_, I, i
%
EDMUND: Thou, nature, art my goddess.
      -- _King Lear_, I, ii
%
EDMUND: Why bastard? wherefore base?
 When my dimensions are as well compact,
 My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
 As honest madam's issue?
      -- _King Lear_, I, ii
%
EDMUND: Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
      -- _King Lear_, I, ii
%
GLOUCESTER: We have seen the best of our time: machinations, hollowness,
treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves.
      -- _King Lear_, I, ii
%
EDMUND: This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in
fortune -- often the surfeit of our own behavior -- we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by
necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by
spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced
obedience of planetary influence, and all that we are evil in, by a divine
thrusting on.
      -- _King Lear_, I, ii
%
KENT: I do profess to be no less than I seem; to serve him truly that will put
me in trust: to love him that is honest; to converse with him that is wise, and
says little; to fear judgment; to fight when I cannot choose; and to eat no
fish.
      -- _King Lear_, I, iv
%
    LEAR: Dost thou know me, fellow?
    KENT: No, sir; but you have that in your countenance which I would fain
call master.
    LEAR: What's that?
    KENT: Authority.
      -- _King Lear_, I, iv
%
FOOL: Truth's a dog must to kennel.
      -- _King Lear_, I, iv
%
FOOL: Have more than thou showest,
 Speak less than thou knowest,
 Lend less than thou owest,
 Ride more than thou goest.
      -- _King Lear_, I, iv
%
    LEAR: Dost thou call me fool, boy?
    FOOL: All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.
      -- _King Lear_, I, iv
%
FOOL: Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for her
frowning; now thou art an O without a figure. I am better than thou art now; I
am a fool, thou art nothing.
      -- _King Lear_, I, iv
%
LEAR: Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,
 More hideous when thou show'st thee in a child
 Than the sea-monster!
      -- _King Lear_, I, iv
%
LEAR: How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
 To have a thankless child!
      -- _King Lear_, I, iv
%
    FOOL: The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty
reason.
    LEAR: Because they are not eight?
    FOOL: Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool.
      -- _King Lear_, I, v
%
KENT: Thou whoreson zed! thou unnecessary letter!
      -- _King Lear_, II, ii
%
EDGAR: My face I'll grime with filth;
 Blanket my loins: elf all my hair in knots;
 And with presented nakedness out-face
 The winds and persecutions of the sky.
      -- _King Lear_, II, iii
%
FOOL: Fortune, that arrant whore,
 Ne'er turns the key to the poor.
      -- _King Lear_, II, iv
%
FOOL: Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy
neck with following it: but the great one that goes up the hill, let him draw
thee after.
      -- _King Lear_, II, iv
%
FOOL: When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again: I would
have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it.
      -- _King Lear_, II, iv
%
LEAR: Vengeance! plague! death! confusion!
      -- _King Lear_, II, iv
%
GONERIL: All's not offence that indiscretion finds
 And dotage terms so.
      -- _King Lear_, II, iv
%
LEAR: You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
 As full of grief as age; wretched in both.
      -- _King Lear_, II, iv
%
REGAN: O, sir, to wilful men,
 The injuries that they themselves procure
 Must be their schoolmasters.
      -- _King Lear_, II, iv
%
LEAR: Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
      -- _King Lear_, III, ii
%
LEAR: And thou, all-shaking thunder,
 Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
      -- _King Lear_, III, ii
%
LEAR: I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
 I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
 You owe me no subscription.
      -- _King Lear_, III, ii
%
LEAR: No, I will be the pattern of all patience;
 I will say nothing.
      -- _King Lear_, III, ii
%
LEAR: I am a man more sinn'd against than sinning.
      -- _King Lear_, III, ii
%
LEAR: My wits begin to turn.
      -- _King Lear_, III, ii
%
LEAR: The art of our necessities is strange,
 And can make vile things precious.
      -- _King Lear_, III, ii
%
FOOL: This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time.
      -- _King Lear_, III, ii
%
LEAR: But where the greater malady is fix'd,
 The lesser is scarce felt.
      -- _King Lear_, III, iv
%
LEAR: O, that way madness lies.
      -- _King Lear_, III, iv
%
LEAR: Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
 That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
 How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
 Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
 From seasons such as these?
      -- _King Lear_, III, iv
%
LEAR: O, I have ta'en
 Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;
 Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel.
      -- _King Lear_, III, iv
%
EDGAR: False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in
stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey.
      -- _King Lear_, III, iv
%
LEAR: Is man no more than this? Consider him well.
      -- _King Lear_, III, iv
%
EDGAR: The prince of darkness is a gentleman.
      -- _King Lear_, III, iv
%
EDGAR: Child Rowland to the dark tower came.
      -- _King Lear_, III, iv
%
EDGAR: Purr the cat is gray.
      -- _King Lear_, III, vi
%
EDGAR: Who alone suffers suffers most i' the mind,
 Leaving free things and happy shows behind:
 But then the mind much sufferance doth o'er skip,
 When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.
      -- _King Lear_, III, vi
%
GLOUCESTER: I am tied to the stake, and I must stand the course.
      -- _King Lear_, III, vii
%
EDGAR: The lamentable change is from the best;
 The worst returns to laughter.
      -- _King Lear_, IV, i
%
EDGAR: World, world, O world!
 But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee,
 Life would not yield to age.
      -- _King Lear_, IV, i
%
GLOUCESTER: Full oft 'tis seen,
 Our means secure us, and our mere defects
 Prove our commodities.
      -- _King Lear_, IV, i
%
EDGAR: The worst is not, so long as we can say "This is the worst."
      -- _King Lear_, IV, i
%
GLOUCESTER: As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods.
 They kill us for their sport.
      -- _King Lear_, IV, i
%
GLOUCESTER: 'Tis the time's plague, when madmen lead the blind.
      -- _King Lear_, IV, i
%
ALBANY: Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile:
 Filths savour but themselves.
      -- _King Lear_, IV, ii
%
    GLOUCESTER: Is 't not the king?
    LEAR: Ay, every inch a king.
      -- _King Lear_, IV, vi
%
LEAR: But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
 Beneath is all the fiends'.
      -- _King Lear_, IV, vi
%
LEAR: There's hell, there's darkness, there's the sulphurous pit, burning,
scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!
      -- _King Lear_, IV, vi
%
    GLOUCESTER: O, let me kiss that hand!
    LEAR: Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.
      -- _King Lear_, IV, vi
%
LEAR: There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog's obeyed in
office.
      -- _King Lear_, IV, vi
%
LEAR: Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear;
 Robes and furr'd gowns hide all.
      -- _King Lear_, IV, vi
%
LEAR: When we are born, we cry that we are come
 To this great stage of fools.
      -- _King Lear_, IV, vi
%
LEAR: You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave.
 Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound
 Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears
 Do scald like molten lead.
      -- _King Lear_, IV, vii
%
LEAR: I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
      -- _King Lear_, IV, vii
%
LEAR: You must bear with me.
      -- _King Lear_, IV, vii
%
LEAR: Come, let's away to prison:
 We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
 When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
 And ask of thee forgiveness. So we'll live,
 And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
 At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
 Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
 Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
 And take upon's the mystery of things,
 As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
 In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
 That ebb and flow by the moon.
      -- _King Lear_, V, iii
%
EDMUND: Know thou this, that men are as the time is.
      -- _King Lear_, V, iii
%
EDGAR: The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
 Make instruments to plague us.
      -- _King Lear_, V, iii
%
EDMUND: The wheel is come full circle.
      -- _King Lear_, V, iii
%
LEAR: Howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:
 Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so
 That heaven's vault should crack.
      -- _King Lear_, V, iii
%
LEAR: Her voice was ever soft,
 Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman.
      -- _King Lear_, V, iii
%
KENT: All's cheerless, dark, and deadly.
      -- _King Lear_, V, iii
%
LEAR: And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life!
 Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
 And thou no breath at all?
      -- _King Lear_, V, iii
%
KENT: Vex not his ghost. O, let him pass! He hates him
 That would upon the rack of this tough world
 Stretch him out longer.
      -- _King Lear_, V, iii
%
    EDGAR: He is gone, indeed.
    KENT: The wonder is, he hath endured so long.
      -- _King Lear_, V, iii
%
ANTONY: There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, I, i
%
ANTONY: Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
 Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, I, i
%
ANTONY: Kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alike
 Feeds beast as man.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, I, i
%
ANTONY: Let's not confound the time with conference harsh:
 There's not a minute of our lives should stretch
 Without some pleasure now.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, I, i
%
    CHARMIAN: Is't you, sir, that know things?
    SOOTHSAYER: In nature's infinite book of secrecy
     A little I can read.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, I, ii
%
    CHARMIAN: Well, if you were but an inch of fortune better than I, where
would you choose it?
    IRAS: Not in my husband's nose.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, I, ii
%
MESSENGER: The nature of bad news infects the teller.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, I, ii
%
ANTONY: Who tells me true, though in his tale lie death,
 I hear him as he flatter'd.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, I, ii
%
ANTONY: There's a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it:
 What our contempt doth often hurl from us,
 We wish it ours again.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, I, ii
%
CLEOPATRA: Eternity was in our lips and eyes,
 Bliss in our brows' bent; none our parts so poor,
 But was a race of heaven.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, I, iii
%
LEPIDUS: I must not think there are
 Evils enow to darken all his goodness:
 His faults in him seem as the spots of heaven,
 More fiery by night's blackness.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, I, iv
%
CLEOPATRA: My salad days,
 When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,
 To say as I said then!
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, I, v
%
    LEPIDUS: 'Tis not a time for private stomaching.
    ENOBARBUS: Every time serves for the matter that is then born in't.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, II, ii
%
    LEPIDUS: But small to greater matters must give way.
    ENOBARBUS: Not if the small come first.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, II, ii
%
LEPIDUS: Your speech is passion; but pray you stir no embers up.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, II, ii
%
ANTONY: Three kings I had newly feasted, and did want
 Of what I was i' the morning ...
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, II, ii
%
AGRIPPA: Truths would be tales,
 Where now half-tales be truths.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, II, ii
%
ENOBARBUS: It beggar'd all description.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, II, ii
%
ENOBARBUS: Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, II, ii
%
ENOBARBUS: Other women cloy
 The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry
 Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
 Become themselves in her: that the holy priests
 Bless her when she is riggish.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, II, ii
%
    MESSENGER: But yet, madam--
    CLEOPATRA: I do not like "But yet," it does allay
     The good precedence.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, II, v
%
CLEOPATRA: "But yet" is as a gaoler to bring forth
 Some monstrous malefactor.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, II, v
%
    CHARMIAN: Good madam, keep yourself within yourself; the man is innocent.
    CLEOPATRA: Some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, II, v
%
    LEPIDUS: What manner o' thing is your crocodile?
    ANTONY: It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad as it hath
breadth: it is just so high as it is, and moves with its own organs: it lives
by that which nourisheth it; and the elements once out of it, it transmigrates.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, II, vii
%
ANTONY: Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can
 Her heart inform her tongue, -- the swan's-down feather,
 That stands upon the swell at full of tide,
 And neither way inclines.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, III, ii
%
OCTAVIUS: I have eyes upon him,
 And his affairs come to me on the wind.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, III, vi
%
SCARUS: We have kiss'd away kingdoms and provinces.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, III, x
%
ENOBARBUS: Now he'll outstare the lightning. To be furious,
 Is to be frighted out of fear; and in that mood
 The dove will peck the estridge.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, III, xiii
%
ENOBARBUS: I see still,
 A diminution in our captain's brain
 Restores his heart: when valour preys on reason,
 It eats the sword it fights with.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, III, xiii
%
OCTAVIUS: The time of universal peace is near.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, IV, vi
%
CLEOPATRA: Wishers were ever fools.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, IV, xv
%
CLEOPATRA: Noblest of men, woo't die?
 Hast thou no care of me? shall I abide
 In this dull world, which in thy absence is
 No better than a sty?
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, IV, xv
%
CLEOPATRA: Let's do it after the high Roman fashion,
 And make death proud to take us.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, IV, xv
%
    DERCETAS: I say, O Caesar, Antony is dead.
    OCTAVIUS CAESAR: The breaking of so great a thing should make
     A greater crack: the round world
     Should have shook lions into civil streets,
     And citizens to their dens. The death of Antony
     Is not a single doom; in the name lay
     A moiety of the world.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, V, i
%
IRAS: Finish, good lady; the bright day is done,
 And we are for the dark.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, V, ii
%
    CLEOPATRA: Hast thou the pretty worm of Nilus there,
     That kills and pains not?
    CLOWN: Truly, I have him: but I would not be the party that should desire
you to touch him, for his biting is immortal; those that do die of it do seldom
or never recover.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, V, ii
%
CLEOPATRA: Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
 Immortal longings in me.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, V, ii
%
OCTAVIUS: But she looks like sleep,
 As she would catch another Antony
 In her strong toil of grace.
      -- _Antony and Cleopatra_, V, ii
%
    FIRST WITCH: When shall we three meet again
     In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
    SECOND WITCH: When the hurlyburly's done,
     When the battle's lost and won.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, i
%
WITCHES: Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
 Hover through the fog and filthy air.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, i
%
SERGEANT: Doubtful it stood;
 As two spent swimmers, that do cling together
 And choke their art.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, ii
%
FIRST WITCH: "Give me," quoth I:
 "Aroint thee, witch!" the rump-fed ronyon cries.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
FIRST WITCH: Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger:
 But in a sieve I'll thither sail,
 And, like a rat without a tail,
 I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
FIRST WITCH: I'll drain him dry as hay:
 Sleep shall neither night nor day
 Hang upon his pent-house lid;
 He shall live a man forbid:
 Weary se'nnights nine times nine
 Shall he dwindle, peak and pine:
 Though his bark cannot be lost,
 Yet it shall be tempest-tost.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
WITCHES: The weird sisters, hand in hand,
 Posters of the sea and land,
 Thus do go about, about:
 Thrice to thine and thrice to mine
 And thrice again, to make up nine.
 Peace! the charm's wound up.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
MACBETH: So foul and fair a day I have not seen.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
BANQUO: What are these
 So wither'd and so wild in their attire,
 That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth,
 And yet are on't?
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
BANQUO: If you can look into the seeds of time,
 And say which grain will grow and which will not,
 Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
 Your favours nor your hate.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
    BANQUO: The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,
     And these are of them. Whither are they vanish'd?
    MACBETH: Into the air; and what seem'd corporal melted
     As breath into the wind. Would they had stay'd!
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
BANQUO: Were such things here as we do speak about?
 Or have we eaten on the insane root
 That takes the reason prisoner?
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
MACBETH: The thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me
 In borrow'd robes?
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
BANQUO: And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
 The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
 Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
 In deepest consequence.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
MACBETH: Two truths are told,
 As happy prologues to the swelling act
 Of the imperial theme.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
MACBETH: This supernatural soliciting
 Cannot be ill, cannot be good.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
MACBETH: If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
 Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
 And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
 Against the use of nature?
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
MACBETH: My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
 Shakes so my single state of man that function
 Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is
 But what is not.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
MACBETH: If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,
 Without my stir.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
BANQUO: New honors come upon him,
 Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould
 But with the aid of use.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
MACBETH: Come what come may,
 Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
MACBETH: Give me your favour: my dull brain was wrought
 With things forgotten.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iii
%
MALCOLM: Nothing in his life
 Became him like the leaving it.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iv
%
MALCOLM: He died
 As one that had been studied in his death
 To throw away the dearest thing he owed,
 As 'twere a careless trifle.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iv
%
DUNCAN: There's no art
 To find the mind's construction in the face:
 He was a gentleman on whom I built
 An absolute trust.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iv
%
MACBETH: Stars, hide your fires;
 Let not light see my black and deep desires:
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iv
%
MACBETH: The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be,
 Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, iv
%
LADY MACBETH: Yet do I fear thy nature;
 It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
 To catch the nearest way.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, v
%
LADY MACBETH: The raven himself is hoarse
 That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
 Under my battlements.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, v
%
LADY MACBETH: Come, you spirits
 That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
 And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
 Of direst cruelty!
      -- _Macbeth_, I, v
%
LADY MACBETH: Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
 May read strange matters.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, v
%
LADY MACBETH: 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.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, v
%
MACBETH: If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
 It were done quickly.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, vii
%
MACBETH: ... that but this blow
 Might be the be-all and the end-all here.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, vii
%
MACBETH: But in these cases
 We still have judgment here, that we but teach
 Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
 To plague the inventor.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, vii
%
MACBETH: 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.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, vii
%
LADY MACBETH: Art thou afeard
 To be the same in thine own act and valour
 As thou art in desire?
      -- _Macbeth_, I, vii
%
MACBETH: I dare do all that may become a man;
 Who dares do more is none.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, vii
%
LADY MACBETH: We fail?
 But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
 And we'll not fail.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, vii
%
LADY MACBETH: Soundly invite him--his two chamberlains
 Will I with wine and wassail so convince
 That memory, the warder of the brain,
 Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason
 A limbeck only ...
      -- _Macbeth_, I, vii
%
LADY MACBETH: When in swinish sleep
 Their drenched natures lie as in a death ...
      -- _Macbeth_, I, vii
%
LADY MACBETH: Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
 False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
      -- _Macbeth_, I, vii
%
BANQUO: There's husbandry in heaven;
 Their candles are all out.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, i
%
BANQUO: A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
 And yet I would not sleep. Merciful powers,
 Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature
 Gives way to in repose!
      -- _Macbeth_, II, i
%
MACBETH: Is this a dagger which I see before me,
 The handle toward my hand?
      -- _Macbeth_, II, i
%
MACBETH: 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?
      -- _Macbeth_, II, i
%
MACBETH: Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going;
 And such an instrument I was to use.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, i
%
MACBETH: Now o'er the one half world
 Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
 The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates
 Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder,
 Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
 Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace.
 With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
 Moves like a ghost.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, i
%
MACBETH: Thou sure and firm-set earth,
 Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
 Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
 And take the present horror from the time,
 Which now suits with it.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, i
%
MACBETH: Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, i
%
MACBETH: I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
 Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
 That summons thee to heaven or to hell.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, i
%
LADY MACBETH: That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold;
 What hath quench'd them hath given me fire.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, ii
%
MACBETH: Methought I heard a voice cry "Sleep no more!
 Macbeth does murder sleep", the innocent sleep,
 Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
 The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
 Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
 Chief nourisher in life's feast,--
      -- _Macbeth_, II, ii
%
MACBETH: I am afraid to think what I have done;
 Look on't again I dare not.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, ii
%
LADY MACBETH: The sleeping and the dead
 Are but as pictures.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, ii
%
LADY MACBETH: 'Tis the eye of childhood
 That fears a painted devil.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, ii
%
MACBETH: 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.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, ii
%
LADY MACBETH: A little water clears us of this deed:
 How easy is it, then!
      -- _Macbeth_, II, ii
%
PORTER: Who's there, in the other devil's name? Faith, here's an equivocator,
that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason
enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven: O, come in,
equivocator.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, iii
%
PORTER: But this place is too cold for hell. I'll devil-porter it no further: I
had thought to have let in some of all professions that go the primrose way to
the everlasting bonfire.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, iii
%
    PORTER: 'Faith sir, we were carousing till the second cock: and drink, sir,
is a great provoker of three things.
    MACDUFF: What three things does drink especially provoke?
    PORTER: Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, iii
%
PORTER: Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes; it provokes the desire, but
it takes away the performance: therefore, much drink may be said to be an
equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it
takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and
not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the
lie, leaves him.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, iii
%
MACBETH: The labour we delight in physics pain.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, iii
%
    LENNOX: The night has been unruly: where we lay,
     Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say,
     Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death,
     And prophesying with accents terrible
     Of dire combustion and confused events
     New hatch'd to the woeful time: the obscure bird
     Clamour'd the livelong night: some say, the earth
     Was feverous and did shake.
    MACBETH: 'Twas a rough night.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, iii
%
MACBETH: Had I but died an hour before this chance,
 I had lived a blessed time; for, from this instant,
 There 's nothing serious in mortality:
 All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;
 The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
 Is left this vault to brag of.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, iii
%
DONALBAIN: Where we are,
 There's daggers in men's smiles: the nea'er in blood,
 The nearer bloody.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, iii
%
ROSS: By the clock, 'tis day,
 And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, iv
%
ROSS: Is't night's predominance, or the day's shame,
 That darkness does the face of earth entomb,
 When living light should kiss it?
      -- _Macbeth_, II, iv
%
OLD MAN: 'Tis unnatural,
 Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last,
 A falcon, towering in her pride of place,
 Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, iv
%
    ROSS: And Duncan's horses -- a thing most strange and certain --
     Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,
     Turn'd wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out,
     Contending 'gainst obedience, as they would make
     War with mankind.
    OLD MAN: 'Tis said they eat each other.
      -- _Macbeth_, II, iv
%
OLD MAN: God's benison go with you; and with those
 That would make good of bad, and friends of foes!
      -- _Macbeth_, II, iv
%
BANQUO: Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all,
 As the weird women promised, and, I fear,
 Thou play'dst most foully for't.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, i
%
    FIRST MURDERER: We are men, my liege.
    MACBETH: Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men;
     As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,
     Shoughs, water-rugs and demi-wolves, are clept
     All by the name of dogs: the valued file
     Distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle,
     The housekeeper, the hunter, every one
     According to the gift which bounteous nature
     Hath in him closed; whereby he does receive
     Particular addition from the bill
     That writes them all alike: and so of men.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, i
%
SECOND MURDERER: I am one, my liege,
 Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world
 Have so incensed that I am reckless what
 I do to spite the world.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, i
%
LADY MACBETH: Naught's had, all's spent,
 Where our desire is got without content:
      -- _Macbeth_, III, ii
%
LADY MACBETH: 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy
 Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, ii
%
LADY MACBETH: Things without all remedy
 Should be without regard: what's done is done.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, ii
%
MACBETH: We have scorched the snake, not killed it:
 She'll close and be herself, whilst our poor malice
 Remains in danger of her former tooth.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, ii
%
MACBETH: Duncan is in his grave;
 After life's fitful fever he sleeps well;
 Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
 Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
 Can touch him further.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, ii
%
MACBETH: O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!
      -- _Macbeth_, III, ii
%
MACBETH: Light thickens; and the crow
 Makes wing to the rooky wood:
 Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
 While night's black agents to their preys do rouse.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, ii
%
MACBETH: I had else been perfect,
 Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,
 As broad and general as the casing air:
 But now I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in
 To saucy doubts and fears.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, iv
%
MACBETH: There the grown serpent lies; the worm that's fled
 Hath nature that in time will venom breed,
 No teeth for the present.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, iv
%
LADY MACBETH: To feed were best at home;
 From thence the sauce to meat is ceremony;
 Meeting were bare without it.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, iv
%
LADY MACBETH: Now, good digestion wait on appetite,
 And health on both!
      -- _Macbeth_, III, iv
%
MACBETH: 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. This is more strange
 Than such a murder is.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, iv
%
MACBETH: Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends,
 I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing
 To those that know me.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, iv
%
MACBETH: Can such things be,
 And overcome us like a summer's cloud,
 Without our special wonder?
      -- _Macbeth_, III, iv
%
MACBETH: It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.
 Stones have been known to move and trees to speak.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, iv
%
MACBETH: Strange things I have in head, that will to hand;
 Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, iv
%
LADY MACBETH: You lack the season of all natures, sleep.
      -- _Macbeth_, III, iv
%
FIRST WITCH: Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, i
%
WITCHES: Double, double toil and trouble;
 Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, i
%
SECOND WITCH: Fillet of a fenny snake,
 In the cauldron boil and bake;
 Eye of newt and toe of frog,
 Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
 Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
 Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
 For a charm of powerful trouble,
 Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, i
%
SECOND WITCH: By the pricking of my thumbs,
 Something wicked this way comes.
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, i
%
MACBETH: How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, i
%
SECOND WITCH: Open, locks,
 Whoever knocks!
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, i
%
SECOND APPARITION: Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn
 The power of man, for none of woman born
 Shall harm Macbeth.
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, i
%
THIRD APPARITION: Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until
 Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
 Shall come against him.
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, i
%
MACBETH: Who can impress the forest, bid the tree
 Unfix his earth-bound root?
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, i
%
MACBETH: From this moment
 The very firstlings of my heart shall be
 The firstlings of my hand.
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, i
%
LADY MACDUFF: When our actions do not,
 Our fears do make us traitors.
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, ii
%
    SON: And must they all be hanged that swear and lie?
    LADY MACDUFF: Every one.
    SON: Who must hang them?
    LADY MACDUFF: Why, the honest men.
    SON: Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and
swearers enow to beat the honest men and hang up them.
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, ii
%
LADY MACDUFF: But I remember now
 I am in this earthly world; where to do harm
 Is often laudable, to do good sometime
 Accounted dangerous folly.
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, ii
%
MALCOLM: Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, iii
%
MALCOLM: I think our country sinks beneath the yoke;
 It weeps, it bleeds; and each new day a gash
 Is added to her wounds.
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, iii
%
MALCOLM: Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
 Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, iii
%
    MALCOLM: Dispute it like a man.
    MACDUFF: I shall do so;
     But I must also feel it as a man.
      -- _Macbeth_, IV, iii
%
LADY MACBETH: Out, damned spot! out, I say!
      -- _Macbeth_, V, i
%
LADY MACBETH: Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood
in him?
      -- _Macbeth_, V, i
%
LADY MACBETH: The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now? -- What, will
these hands ne'er be clean?
      -- _Macbeth_, V, i
%
LADY MACBETH: Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia
will not sweeten this little hand. O, O, O!
      -- _Macbeth_, V, i
%
MACBETH: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
 Raze out the written troubles of the brain
 And with some sweet oblivious antidote
 Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
 Which weighs upon the heart?
      -- _Macbeth_, V, iii
%
DOCTOR: Therein the patient
 Must minister to himself.
      -- _Macbeth_, V, iii
%
MACBETH: Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it.
      -- _Macbeth_, V, iii
%
MACBETH: I have almost forgot the taste of fears;
 The time has been, my senses would have cool'd
 To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
 Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
 As life were in't.
      -- _Macbeth_, V, v
%
MACBETH: I have supp'd full with horrors.
      -- _Macbeth_, V, v
%
    SEYTON: The queen, my lord, is dead.
    MACBETH: She should have died hereafter;
     There would have been a time for such a word.
      -- _Macbeth_, V, v
%
MACBETH: 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.
      -- _Macbeth_, V, v
%
MACBETH: Ring the alarum-bell! Blow wind, come wrack,
 At least we'll die with harness on our back.
      -- _Macbeth_, V, v
%
    MACDUFF: I bear a charmed life, which must not yield,
     To one of woman born.
    MACDUFF: Despair thy charm;
     And let the angel whom thou still hast served
     Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb
     Untimely ripp'd.
      -- _Macbeth_, V, viii
%
MACBETH: Lay on, Macduff,
 And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'
      -- _Macbeth_, V, viii
%
MACDUFF: The time is free.
      -- _Macbeth_, V, viii
%
ANTIOCHUS: Nature this dowry gave, to glad her presence,
 The senate-house of planets all did sit,
 To knit in her their best perfections.
      -- _Pericles_, I, i
%
PERICLES: See where she comes, apparell'd like the spring.
      -- _Pericles_, I, i
%
PERICLES: For death remember'd should be like a mirror,
 Who tells us life's but breath, to trust it error.
      -- _Pericles_, I, i
%
PERICLES: Few love to hear the sins they love to act.
      -- _Pericles_, I, i
%
PERICLES: Kings are earth's gods; in vice their law's their will;
 And if Jove stray, who dares say Jove doth ill?
      -- _Pericles_, I, i
%
PERICLES: Murder's as near to lust as flame to smoke.
      -- _Pericles_, I, i
%
CLEON: My Dionyza, shall we rest us here,
 And by relating tales of others' griefs,
 See if 'twill teach us to forget our own?
      -- _Pericles_, I, iv
%
GOWER: I'll show you those in troubles reign,
 Losing a mite, a mountain gain.
      -- _Pericles_, II, prologue
%
    THIRD FISHERMAN: Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.
    FIRST FISHERMAN: Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the
     little ones.
      -- _Pericles_, II, i
%
PERICLES: How from the finny subject of the sea
 These fishers tell the infirmities of men;
 And from their watery empire recollect
 All that may men approve or men detect!
      -- _Pericles_, II, i
%
PERICLES: A man whom both the waters and the wind,
 In that vast tennis-court, have made the ball
 For them to play upon, entreats you pity him.
      -- _Pericles_, II, i
%
PERICLES: Whereby I see that Time's the king of men,
 He's both their parent, and he is their grave,
 And gives them what he will, not what they crave.
      -- _Pericles_, II, iii
%
GOWER: The cat, with eyne of burning coal,
 Now crouches fore the mouse's hole.
      -- _Pericles_, III, prologue
%
MARINA: This world to me is like a lasting storm,
 Whirring me from my friends.
      -- _Pericles_, IV, i
%
DIONYZA: Nurses are not the fates;
 To foster is not ever to preserve.
      -- _Pericles_, IV, iii
%
GOWER: By you being pardon'd, we commit no crime
 To use one language in each several clime
 Where our scenes seem to live.
      -- _Pericles_, IV, iv
%
GOWER: No visor does become black villany
 So well as soft and tender flattery.
      -- _Pericles_, IV, iv
%
    POET: I have not seen you long: how goes the world?
    PAINTER: It wears, sir, as it grows.
      -- _Timon of Athens_, I, i
%
APEMANTUS: That there should be small love 'mongst these sweet knaves,
 And all this courtesy!
      -- _Timon of Athens_, I, i
%
    SECOND LORD: Thou art going to Lord Timon's feast?
    APEMANTUS: Ay, to see meat fill knaves and wine heat fools.
      -- _Timon of Athens_, I, i
%
TIMON: 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, ii
%
APEMANTUS: Immortal gods, I crave no pelf;
 I pray for no man but myself:
 Grant I may never prove so fond,
 To trust man on his oath or bond;
 Or a harlot, for her weeping;
 Or a dog, that seems a-sleeping:
 Or a keeper with my freedom;
 Or my friends, if I should need 'em.
 Amen.
      -- _Timon of Athens_, I, ii
%
APEMANTUS: Hoy-day, what a sweep of vanity comes this way!
      -- _Timon of Athens_, I, ii
%
APEMANTUS: Who lives that's not depraved or depraves?
      -- _Timon of Athens_, I, ii
%
FLAVIUS: He commands us to provide, and give great gifts,
 And all out of an empty coffer:
 Nor will he know his purse, or yield me this,
 To show him what a beggar his heart is,
 Being of no power to make his wishes good.
      -- _Timon of Athens_, I, ii
%
FLAVIUS: His promises fly so beyond his state
 That what he speaks is all in debt; he owes
 For every word.
      -- _Timon of Athens_, I, ii
%
FLAVIUS: I bleed inwardly for my lord.
      -- _Timon of Athens_, I, ii
%
SENATOR: I love and honour him,
 But must not break my back to heal his finger.
      -- _Timon of Athens_, II, i
%
FLAVIUS: No care, no stop! so senseless of expense,
 That he will neither know how to maintain it,
 Nor cease his flow of riot: takes no account
 How things go from him, nor resumes no care
 Of what is to continue.
      -- _Timon of Athens_, II, ii
%
FLAVIUS: The future comes apace. What shall defend the interim?
      -- _Timon of Athens_, II, ii
%
FLAVIUS: O my good lord, the world is but a word:
 Were it all yours to give it in a breath,
 How quickly were it gone!
      -- _Timon of Athens_, II, ii
%
FLAVIUS: They answer, in a joint and corporate voice,
 That now they are at fall, want treasure, cannot
 Do what they would; are sorry -- you are honourable, --
 But yet they could have wish'd -- they know not --
 Something hath been amiss -- a noble nature
 May catch a wrench -- would all were well -- 'tis pity; --
 And so, intending other serious matters,
 After distasteful looks and these hard fractions,
 With certain half-caps and cold-moving nods
 They froze me into silence.
      -- _Timon of Athens_, II, ii
%
FIRST STRANGER: Men must learn now with pity to dispense;
 For policy sits above conscience.
      -- _Timon of Athens_, III, ii
%
ALCIBIADES: I have kept back their foes,
 While they have told their money and let out
 Their coin upon large interest, I myself
 Rich only in large hurts. All those for this?
      -- _Timon of Athens_, III, v
%
TIMON: Let no assembly of twenty be without a score of villains.
      -- _Timon of Athens_, III, vi
%
APEMANTUS: The commonwealth of Athens is become a forest of beasts.
      -- _Timon of Athens_, IV, iii
%
TIMON: Go, live rich and happy;
 But thus conditioned: thou shalt build from men;
 Hate all, curse all, show charity to none,
 But let the famished flesh slide from the bone,
 Ere thou relieve the beggar. Give to dogs
 What thou deny'st to men. Let prisons swallow 'em,
 Debts wither 'em to nothing; be men like blasted woods,
 And may diseases lick up their false bloods!
 And so farewell and thrive.
      -- _Timon of Athens_, IV, iii
%
MARCIUS: What would you have, you curs, that like nor peace nor war? The one
affrights you, the other makes you proud.
      -- _Coriolanus_, I, i
%
MARCIUS: He that trusts to you, where he should find you lions, finds you
hares; where foxes, geese: you are no surer, no, than is the coal of fire upon
the ice, or hailstone in the sun.
      -- _Coriolanus_, I, i
%
MARCIUS: With every minute you do change a mind,
 And call him noble that was now your hate,
 Him vile that was your garland.
      -- _Coriolanus_, I, i
%
    VALERIA: O' my word, the father's son! I'll swear, 'tis a very pretty boy.
O' my troth, I looked upon him a Wednesday half an hour together; has such a
confirmed countenance! I saw him run after a gilded butterfly; and when he
caught it, he let it go again, and after it again, and over and over he comes,
and again, catched it again; or whether his fall enraged him, or how 'twas, he
did so set his teeth and tear it. O, I warrant, how he mammocked it!
    VOLUMNIA: One on 's father's moods.
    VALERIA: Indeed, la, 'tis a noble child.
      -- _Coriolanus_, I, iii
%
    BRUTUS: We do it not alone, sir.
    MENENIUS: I know you can do very little alone; for your helps are many, or
else your actions would grow wondrous single: your abilities are too
infant-like for doing much alone.
      -- _Coriolanus_, II, i
%
FIRST OFFICER: If he did not care whether he had their love or no, he waved
indifferently 'twixt doing them neither good nor harm: but he seeks their hate
with greater devotion than can render it him; and leaves nothing undone that
may fully discover him their opposite. Now, to seem to affect the malice and
displeasure of the people is as bad as that which he dislikes, to flatter them
for their love.
      -- _Coriolanus_, II, ii
%
CORIOLANUS: Yet oft, when blows have made me stay, I fled from words.
      -- _Coriolanus_, II, ii
%
CORIOLANUS: Bid them wash their faces and keep their teeth clean.
      -- _Coriolanus_, II, iii
%
CORIOLANUS: And mountainous error be too highly heap'd for truth to o'erpeer.
      -- _Coriolanus_, II, iii
%
BRUTUS: Get you hence instantly, and tell those friends,
 They have chose a consul that will from them take
 Their liberties, make them of no more voice
 Than dogs that are as often beat for barking
 As therefore kept to do so.
      -- _Coriolanus_, II, iii
%
COMINIUS: But now 'tis odds beyond arithmetic.
      -- _Coriolanus_, III, i
%
    SECOND PATRICIAN: I would they were abed!
    MENENIUS: I would they were in Tiber!
      -- _Coriolanus_, III, i
%
MENENIUS: The service of the foot
 Being once gangrened, is not then respected
 For what before it was.
      -- _Coriolanus_, III, i
%
CORIOLANUS: For you, the city, thus I turn my back:
 There is a world elsewhere.
      -- _Coriolanus_, III, iii
%
VOLUMNIA: Anger's my meat; I sup upon myself, and so shall starve with feeding.
      -- _Coriolanus_, IV, ii
%
FIRST SERVANT: Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does
night; it's spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very
apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard
children than war's a destroyer of men.
      -- _Coriolanus_, IV, v
%
THIRD CITIZEN: That we did, we did for the best; and though we willingly
consented to his banishment, yet it was against our will.
      -- _Coriolanus_, IV, vi
%
    COMINIUS: I offer'd to awaken his regard
     For's private friends: his answer to me was,
     He could not stay to pick them in a pile
     Of noisome musty chaff. He said 'twas folly,
     For one poor grain or two, to leave unburnt
     And still to nose the offence.
    MENENIUS: For one poor grain or two!
     I am one of those; his mother, wife, his child,
     And this brave fellow too, we are the grains.
      -- _Coriolanus_, V, i
%
MENENIUS: He had not dined:
 The veins unfill'd, our blood is cold, and then
 We pout upon the morning, are unapt
 To give or to forgive; but when we have stuff'd
 These and these conveyances of our blood
 With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls
 Than in our priest-like fasts.
      -- _Coriolanus_, V, i
%
MENENIUS: The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes.
      -- _Coriolanus_, V, iv
%
MENENIUS: No, in such a case the gods will not be good unto us. When we
banished him, we respected not them; and, he returning to break our necks, they
respect not us.
      -- _Coriolanus_, V, iv
%
AUFIDIUS: At a few drops of women's rheum, which are as cheap as lies, he sold
the blood and labour of our great action: therefore shall he die, and I'll
renew me in his fall.
      -- _Coriolanus_, V, vi
%
CLOTEN: I am glad I was up so late; for that's the reason I was up so early.
      -- _Cymbeline_, II, iii
%
CLOTEN: Britain is a world by itself; and we will nothing pay for wearing our
own noses.
      -- _Cymbeline_, III, i
%
CLOTEN: If you seek us afterwards in other terms, you shall find us in our
salt-water girdle. If you beat us out of it, it is yours; if you fall in the
adventure, our crows shall fare the better for you, and there's an end.
      -- _Cymbeline_, III, i
%
PISANIO: What shall I need to draw my sword? the paper
 Hath cut her throat already.
      -- _Cymbeline_, III, iv
%
PISANIO: No, 'tis 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.
      -- _Cymbeline_, III, iv
%
PISANIO: Kings, queens and states,
 Maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave
 This viperous slander enters.
      -- _Cymbeline_, III, iv
%
IMOGEN: I see a man's life is a tedious one.
      -- _Cymbeline_, III, vi
%
IMOGEN: Plenty and peace breeds cowards: hardness ever
 Of hardiness is mother.
      -- _Cymbeline_, III, vi
%
IMOGEN: Stick to your journal course: the breach of custom is breach of all.
      -- _Cymbeline_, IV, ii
%
IMOGEN: Society is no comfort to one not sociable.
      -- _Cymbeline_, IV, ii
%
GUIDERIUS: I cannot sing: I'll weep, and word it with thee;
 For notes of sorrow out of tune are worse
 Than priests and fanes that lie.
      -- _Cymbeline_, IV, ii
%
Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
 Nor the furious winter's rages;
 Thou thy worldly task hast done,
 Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages:
 Golden lads and girls all must,
 As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
      -- _Cymbeline_, IV, ii
%
Fear no more the frown o' the great;
 Thou art past the tyrant's stroke;
 Care no more to clothe and eat;
 To thee the reed is as the oak:
 The sceptre, learning, physic, must
 All follow this, and come to dust.
      -- _Cymbeline_, IV, ii
%
All lovers young, all lovers must
 Consign to thee, and come to dust.
      -- _Cymbeline_, IV, ii
%
PISANIO: The heavens still must work.
      -- _Cymbeline_, IV, iii
%
POSTHUMUS LEONATUS: A book? O rare one!
 Be not, as is our fangled world, a garment
 Nobler than that it covers!
      -- _Cymbeline_, V, iv
%
FIRST JAILER: O, the charity of a penny cord! It sums up thousands in a trice:
you have no true debitor and creditor but it; of what's past, is, and to come,
the discharge: your neck, sir, is pen, book and counters; so the acquittance
follows.
      -- _Cymbeline_, V, iv
%
POLIXENES: And therefore, like a cipher,
 Yet standing in rich place, I multiply
 With one 'We thank you' many thousands more
 That go before it.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, I, ii
%
POLIXENES: We were, fair queen,
 Two lads that thought there was no more behind
 But such a day tomorrow as today,
 And to be boy eternal.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, I, ii
%
POLIXENES: What we changed
 Was innocence for innocence; we knew not
 The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream'd
 That any did.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, I, ii
%
HERMIONE: Cram's with praise, and make's
 As fat as tame things. One good deed dying tongueless
 Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that.
 Our praises are our wages. You may ride's
 With one soft kiss a thousand furlongs ere
 With spur we beat an acre.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, I, ii
%
LEONTES: Is whispering nothing?
 Is leaning cheek to cheek? Is meeting noses?
 Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career
 Of laughter with a sigh? -- a note infallible
 Of breaking honesty! -- horsing foot on foot?
 Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift?
 Hours, minutes? noon, midnight? and all eyes
 Blind with the pin and web but theirs, theirs only,
 That would unseen be wicked? Is this nothing?
 Why, then the world and all that's in't is nothing,
 The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing,
 My wife is nothing, nor nothing have these nothings,
 If this be nothing.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, I, ii
%
CAMILLO: You may as well
 Forbid the sea for to obey the moon
 As or by oath remove or counsel shake
 The fabric of his folly, whose foundation
 Is piled upon his faith and will continue
 The standing of his body.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, I, ii
%
MAMILLIUS: A sad tale's best for winter: I have one of sprites and goblins.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, II, i
%
LEONTES: There may be in the cup
 A spider steep'd, and one may drink, depart,
 And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge
 Is not infected: but if one present
 The abhorr'd ingredient to his eye, make known
 How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides,
 With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, II, i
%
HERMIONE: The crown and comfort of my life, your favour,
 I do give lost; for I do feel it gone,
 But know not how it went.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, III, ii
%
PAULINA: What's gone and what's past help should be past grief.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, III, ii
%
Exit, pursued by a bear.
      -- Stage direction in _The Winter's Tale_, III, iii
%
SHEPHERD: I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or
that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but
getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, III, iii
%
TIME: I, that please some, try all, both joy and terror
 Of good and bad, that makes and unfolds error,
 Now take upon me, in the name of Time,
 To use my wings.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, i
%
PERDITA: For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep
 Seeming and savour all the winter long.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, iv
%
POLIXENES: Yet nature is made better by no mean
 But nature makes that mean.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, iv
%
PERDITA: Here's flowers for you;
 Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram;
 The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun
 And with him rises weeping: these are flowers
 Of middle summer, and I think they are given
 To men of middle age.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, iv
%
PERDITA: Sure this robe of mine does change my disposition.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, iv
%
CAMILLO: I should leave grazing, were I of your flock,
 And only live by gazing.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, iv
%
PERDITA: 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
 Bight 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.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, iv
%
FLORIZEL: When you do dance, I wish you
 A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
 Nothing but that, move still, still so,
 And own no other function.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, iv
%
FLORIZEL: Old sir, I know
 She prizes not such trifles as these are:
 The gifts she looks from me are pack'd and lock'd
 Up in my heart; which I have given already,
 But not deliver'd.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, iv
%
FLORIZEL: Not for Bohemia, nor the pomp that may
 Be thereat glean'd, for all the sun sees or
 The close earth wombs or the profound seas hide
 In unknown fathoms, will I break my oath
 To this my fair beloved.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, iv
%
FLORIZEL: But as the unthought-on accident is guilty
 To what we wildly do, so we profess
 Ourselves to be the slaves of chance, and flies
 Of every wind that blows.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, iv
%
CAMILLO: Prosperity's the very bond of love,
 Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together
 Affliction alters.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, iv
%
AUTOLYCUS: I see this is the time that the unjust man doth thrive.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, iv
%
SERVANT: He hath songs for man or woman, of all sizes.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, iv
%
AUTOLYCUS: Come buy of me, come; come buy, come buy;
 Buy lads, or else your lasses cry: Come buy.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, iv
%
AUTOLYCUS: How blessed are we that are not simple men!
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, IV, iv
%
CLEOMENES: Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil;
 With them forgive yourself.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, V, i
%
SECOND GENTLEMAN: How goes it now, sir? This news which is called true is so
like an old tale, that the verity of it is in strong suspicion.
      -- _The Winter's Tale_, V, i
%
GONZALO: Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren
ground, long heath, brown furze, any thing. The wills above be done! but I
would fain die a dry death.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, i
%
MIRANDA: If by your art, my dearest father, you have
 Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
MIRANDA: You have often
 Begun to tell me what I am, but stopp'd
 And left me to a bootless inquisition,
 Concluding 'Stay: not yet.'
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
PROSPERO: The hour's now come;
 The very minute bids thee ope thine ear.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
PROSPERO: But how is it
 That this lives in thy mind? What seest thou else
 In the dark backward and abysm of time?
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
MIRANDA: Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
PROSPERO: Me, poor man, my library was dukedom large enough.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
PROSPERO: So, of his gentleness,
 Knowing I loved my books, he furnish'd me
 From mine own library with volumes that
 I prize above my dukedom.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
PROSPERO: By my prescience
 I find my zenith doth depend upon
 A most auspicious star, whose influence
 If now I court not but omit, my fortunes
 Will ever after droop.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
ARIEL: All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come
 To answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly,
 To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
 On the curl'd clouds, to thy strong bidding task
 Ariel and all his quality.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
ARIEL: The king's son, Ferdinand,
 With hair up-staring, -- then like reeds, not hair, --
 Was the first man that leap'd; cried, 'Hell is empty
 And all the devils are here.'
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
PROSPERO: The time 'twixt six and now must by us both be spent most preciously.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
ARIEL: I prithee,
 Remember I have done thee worthy service;
 Told thee no lies, made thee no mistakings, served
 Without or grudge or grumblings: thou didst promise
 To bate me a full year.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
MIRANDA: The strangeness of your story put heaviness in me.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
PROSPERO: Come on; We'll visit Caliban my slave, who never Yields us kind
answer.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
CALIBAN: As wicked dew as e'er my mother brush'd
 With raven's feather from unwholesome fen
 Drop on you both!
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
CALIBAN: When thou camest first,
 Thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give me
 Water with berries in't, and teach me how
 To name the bigger light, and how the less,
 That burn by day and night.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
PROSPERO: When thou didst not, savage,
 Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like
 A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes
 With words that made them known.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
CALIBAN: You taught me language; and my profit on't
 Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
 For learning me your language!
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
FERDINAND: This music crept by me upon the waters,
 Allaying both their fury and my passion
 With its sweet air: thence I have follow'd it,
 Or it hath drawn me rather.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
ARIEL: 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.
 Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell
 Hark! now I hear them, -- Ding-dong, bell.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
PROSPERO: They are both in either's powers; but this swift business
 I must uneasy make, lest too light winning
 Make the prize light.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
PROSPERO: Thou dost here usurp
 The name thou owest not; and hast put thyself
 Upon this island as a spy, to win it
 From me, the lord on't.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
MIRANDA: There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple:
 If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
 Good things will strive to dwell with't.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
PROSPERO: I'll manacle thy neck and feet together:
 Sea-water shalt thou drink; thy food shall be
 The fresh-brook muscles, wither'd roots and husks
 Wherein the acorn cradled.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
FERDINAND: My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up.
 My father's loss, the weakness which I feel,
 The wreck of all my friends, nor this man's threats,
 To whom I am subdued, are but light to me,
 Might I but through my prison once a day
 Behold this maid: all corners else o' the earth
 Let liberty make use of; space enough
 Have I in such a prison.
      -- _The Tempest_, I, ii
%
    GONZALO: Here is everything advantageous to life.
    ANTONIO: True; save means to live.
      -- _The Tempest_, II, i
%
ANTONIO: We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again,
 And by that destiny to perform an act
 Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
 In yours and my discharge.
      -- _The Tempest_, II, i
%
    SEBASTIAN: But, for your conscience?
    ANTONIO: Ay, sir; where lies that?
      -- _The Tempest_, II, i
%
ANTONIO: But I feel not
 This deity in my bosom: twenty consciences,
 That stand 'twixt me and Milan, candied be they
 And melt ere they molest!
      -- _The Tempest_, II, i
%
ANTONIO: For all the rest, they'll take suggestion as a cat laps milk.
      -- _The Tempest_, II, i
%
ANTONIO: They'll tell the clock to any business that we say befits the hour.
      -- _The Tempest_, II, i
%
ARIEL: While you here do snoring lie,
 Open-eyed conspiracy
 His time doth take.
      -- _The Tempest_, II, i
%
ARIEL: If of life you keep a care,
 Shake off slumber, and beware:
 Awake, awake!
      -- _The Tempest_, II, i
%
CALIBAN: All the infections that the sun sucks up
 From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him
 By inch-meal a disease! His spirits hear me
 And yet I needs must curse.
      -- _The Tempest_, II, ii
%
TRINCULO: Any strange beast there makes a man: when they will not give a doit
to relieve a lame beggar, they will lazy out ten to see a dead Indian.
      -- _The Tempest_, II, ii
%
TRINCULO: Misery acquaints a man with
 strange bed-fellows.
      -- _The Tempest_, II, ii
%
FERDINAND: There be some sports are painful, and their labour
 Delight in them sets off: some kinds of baseness
 Are nobly undergone and most poor matters
 Point to rich ends.
      -- _The Tempest_, III, i
%
FERDINAND: I had rather crack my sinews, break my back,
 Than you should such dishonour undergo,
 While I sit lazy by.
      -- _The Tempest_, III, i
%
TRINCULO: They say there's but five upon this isle: we are three of them; if
th' other two be brained like us, the state totters.
      -- _The Tempest_, III, ii
%
CALIBAN: Remember
 First to possess his books; for without them
 He's but a sot, as I am, nor hath not
 One spirit to command: they all do hate him
 As rootedly as I.
      -- _The Tempest_, III, ii
%
CALIBAN: Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
 Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
 Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
 Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
 That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
 Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
 The clouds methought would open and show riches
 Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
 I cried to dream again.
      -- _The Tempest_, III, ii
%
SEBASTIAN: Now I will believe
 That there are unicorns, that in Arabia
 There is one tree, the phoenix' throne, one phoenix
 At this hour reigning there.
      -- _The Tempest_, III, iii
%
ANTONIO: Travellers ne'er did lie, though fools at home condemn 'em.
      -- _The Tempest_, III, iii
%
ARIEL: Being most unfit to live. I have made you mad;
 And even with such-like valour men hang and drown
 Their proper selves.
      -- _The Tempest_, III, iii
%
ARIEL: I and my fellows
 Are ministers of Fate: the elements,
 Of whom your swords are temper'd, may as well
 Wound the loud winds, or with bemock'd-at stabs
 Kill the still-closing waters, as diminish
 One dowle that's in my plume.
      -- _The Tempest_, III, iii
%
ARIEL: If you could hurt,
 Your swords are now too massy for your strengths
 And will not be uplifted.
      -- _The Tempest_, III, iii
%
PROSPERO: Bravely the figure of this harpy hast thou
 Perform'd, my Ariel; a grace it had devouring.
      -- _The Tempest_, III, iii
%
ALONSO: O, it is monstrous, monstrous:
 Methought the billows spoke and told me of it;
 The winds did sing it to me, and the thunder,
 That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounced
 The name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass.
 Therefore my son i' the ooze is bedded, and
 I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded
 And with him there lie mudded.
      -- _The Tempest_, III, iii
%
ARIEL: Before you can say 'come' and 'go,'
 And breathe twice and cry 'so, so,'
 Each one, tripping on his toe,
 Will be here with mop and mow.
      -- _The Tempest_, IV, i
%
PROSPERO: Look thou be true; do not give dalliance
 Too much the rein: the strongest oaths are straw
 To the fire i' the blood: be more abstemious,
 Or else, good night your vow!
      -- _The Tempest_, IV, i
%
CERES: Why hath thy queen
 Summon'd me hither, to this short-grass'd green?
      -- _The Tempest_, IV, i
%
PROSPERO: 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, the great globe itself,
 Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
 Leave not a rack behind.
      -- _The Tempest_, IV, i
%
PROSPERO: We are such stuff
 As dreams are made on, and our little life
 Is rounded with a sleep.
      -- _The Tempest_, IV, i
%
PROSPERO: Sir, I am vex'd;
 Bear with my weakness; my, brain is troubled:
 Be not disturb'd with my infirmity.
      -- _The Tempest_, IV, i
%
PROSPERO: A turn or two I'll walk, to still my beating mind.
      -- _The Tempest_, IV, i
%
PROSPERO: A devil, a born devil, on whose nature
 Nurture can never stick.
      -- _The Tempest_, IV, i
%
CALIBAN: Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not hear a foot fall.
      -- _The Tempest_,
%
CALIBAN: We shall lose our time,
 And all be turn'd to barnacles, or to apes
 With foreheads villanous low.
      -- _The Tempest_,
%
PROSPERO: Now does my project gather to a head:
 My charms crack not; my spirits obey; and time
 Goes upright with his carriage. How's the day?
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
ARIEL: Your charm so strongly works 'em
 That if you now beheld them, your affections
 Would become tender.
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
PROSPERO: Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling
 Of their afflictions, and shall not myself,
 One of their kind, that relish all as sharply,
 Passion as they, be kindlier moved than thou art?
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
PROSPERO: Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick,
 Yet with my nobler reason 'gaitist my fury
 Do I take part: the rarer action is
 In virtue than in vengeance.
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
PROSPERO: I have bedimm'd
 The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds,
 And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
 Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
 Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak
 With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
 Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up
 The pine and cedar: graves at my command
 Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 'em forth
 By my so potent art.
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
PROMONTORY: I'll break my staff,
 Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
 And deeper than did ever plummet sound
 I'll drown my book.
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
PROSPERO: A solemn air and the best comforter
 To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains,
 Now useless, boil'd within thy skull!
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
PROSPERO: The charm dissolves apace,
 And as the morning steals upon the night,
 Melting the darkness, so their rising senses
 Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
 Their clearer reason.
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
PROSPERO: Their understanding
 Begins to swell, and the approaching tide
 Will shortly fill the reasonable shore
 That now lies foul and muddy.
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
ARIEL: Where the bee sucks. there suck I:
 In a cowslip's bell I lie;
 There I couch when owls do cry.
 On the bat's back I do fly
 After summer merrily.
 Merrily, merrily shall I live now
 Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
MIRANDA: How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
 That has such people in't!
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
PROSPERO: There, sir, stop:
 Let us not burthen our remembrance with
 A heaviness that's gone.
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
GONZALO: O, rejoice
 Beyond a common joy, and set it down
 With gold on lasting pillars: In one voyage
 Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis,
 And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife
 Where he himself was lost, Prospero his dukedom
 In a poor isle and all of us ourselves
 When no man was his own.
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
    ARIEL: Was't well done?
    PROSPERO: Bravely, my diligence. Thou shalt be free.
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
STEPHANO: Every man shift for all the rest, and
 let no man take care for himself; for all is
 but fortune. Coragio, bully-monster, coragio!
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
PROSPERO: This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
PROSPERO: And thence retire me to my Milan, where
 Every third thought shall be my grave.
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
%
PROSPERO: My Ariel, chick,
 That is thy charge: then to the elements
 Be free, and fare thou well!
      -- _The Tempest_, V, i
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PROSPERO: Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
 And what strength I have's mine own,
 Which is most faint.
      -- _The Tempest_, epilogue
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PROSPERO: Now, 'tis true,
 I must be here confined by you,
 Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
 Since I have my dukedom got
 And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
 In this bare island by your spell;
 But release me from my bands
 With the help of your good hands:
 Gentle breath of yours my sails
 Must fill, or else my project fails,
 Which was to please.
      -- _The Tempest_, epilogue
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PROSPERO: Now I want
 Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
 And my ending is despair,
 Unless I be relieved by prayer,
 Which pierces so that it assaults
 Mercy itself and frees all faults.
 As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
 Let your indulgence set me free.
      -- _The Tempest_, epilogue
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WOLSEY: I have touch'd 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 m the evening,
 And no man see me more.
      -- _Henry VIII_, III, ii
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GRIFFITH: Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues
 We write in water.
      -- _Henry VIII_, IV, ii
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GARDINER: Affairs that walk,
 As they say spirits do, at midnight have
 In them a wilder nature than the business
 That seeks dispatch by day.
      -- _Henry VIII_, V, i
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Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
 To dig the dust enclosèd here.
 Blessed be the man that spares these stones
 And cursed be he that moves my bones.
      -- Epitaph on Shakespeare's grave at Stratford
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