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Nothing will come of nothing.
--King Lear, Act I, scene i
- Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave
- My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty
- According to my bond; nor more nor less.
--Cordelia, Act I, scene i
Come not between the dragon and his wrath.
--King Lear, Act I, scene i
- Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides:
- Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.
--Cordelia, Act I, scene i
- Love is not love
- When it is mingled with regards that stand
- Aloof from the entire point.
She is herself a dowry.
- 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?
--Edmund, Act I, scene ii
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, 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: an admirable evasion of whore-master man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!
--Edmund, Act I, scene ii
- Have more than thou showest,
- Speak less than thou knowest,
- Lend less than thou owest,
- Ride more than thou goest,
- Learn more than thou trowest,
- Set less than thou throwest;
- Leave thy drink and thy whore,
- And keep in-a-door,
- And thou shall have more
- Than two tens to a score.
--The Fool, Act I, scene iv
- Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,
- More hideous, when thou show'st thee in a child
- Than the sea-monster!
--King Lear, Act I, scene iv
- How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
- To have a thankless child!
--King Lear, Act I, scene iv
Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.
--Albany, Act I, scene iv
Fortune, good-night: smile once more; turn thy wheel!
- That sir which serves and seeks for gain,
- And follows but for form,
- Will pack when it begins to rain,
- And leave thee in the storm.
--The Fool, Act II, scene iv
- Allow not nature more than nature needs,
- Man's life is cheap as beast's.
--King Lear, Act II, scene iv
- Let not women's weapons, water-drops,
- Stain my man's cheeks!
--King Lear, Act II, scene iv
- I will do such things,--
- What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be
- The terrors of the earth.
--King Lear, Act II, scene iv
- Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
- You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
- Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks!
- You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
- Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
- Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
- Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
- Crack nature's molds, all germens spill at once
- That make ingrateful man!
--King Lear, Act III, scene ii
- The art of our necessities is strange,
- And can make vile things precious.
--King Lear, Act III, scene ii
- He that has and a little tiny wit,
- With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
- Must make content with his fortunes fit,
- Though the rain it raineth every day.
--The Fool, Act III, scene ii
There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.
--The Fool, Act III, scene ii
The prince of darkness is a gentleman.
--Edgar, Act III, scene iv
He's mad, that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath.
--The Fool, Act III, scene vi
- When we our betters see baring our woes
- We scarcely think our miseries our foes.
--Edgar, Act III, scene vii
- The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,
- Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear:
- The lamentable change is from the best;
- The worst returns to laughter.
- And worse I may be yet: the worst is not,
- So long as we can say, This is the worst.
- As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, —
- They kill us for their sport.
--Gloucester, Act IV, scene i
- You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
- Blows in your face.
--Albany, Act IV, scene ii
- She that herself will sliver and disbranch
- From her material sap, perforce must wither
- And come to deadly use.
--Albany, Act IV, scene ii
- Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile:
- Filths savour but themselves.
--Albany, Act IV, scene ii
- It is the stars,
- The stars above us, govern our conditions.
--Kent, Act IV, scene iii
A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yon simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?
--King Lear, Act IV, scene vi
- Get thee glass eyes;
- And like a scurvy politician, seem
- To see the things thou dost not.
--King Lear, Act IV, scene vi
- When we are born, we cry that we are come
- To this great stage of fools.
--King lear, Act IV, scene vi
There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog's obeyed in office.
--King Lear, Act IV, scene vi
- Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear;
- Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
- And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
- Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.
--King Lear, Act IV, scene vi
Reason in madness!
--Edgar, Act IV, scene vi
- Men must endure
- Their going hence, even as their coming hither:
- Ripeness is all.
- The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
- Make instruments to plague us.
--Edgar, Act V, scene iii
- The weight of this sad time we must obey;
- Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
- The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
- Shall never see so much, nor live so long.
--Edgar, Act V, scene iii
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