--Antony, Act I, scene i

--Antony, Act I, scene i

--Charmian, Act I, scene ii

--Alexas, Act I, scene ii

--Charmian, Act I, scene ii

--Messenger, Act I, scene ii

--Charmian, Act I, scene iii

--Cleopatra, Act I, scene iii

--Cleopatra, Act I, scene iii

--Cleopatra, Act I, scene iii

--Antony, Act I, scene iii

--Caesar, Act I, scene iv

--Cleopatra, Act I, scene iv

--Enobarbus, Act II, scene ii

--Lepidus, Act II, scene ii

--Lepidus, Act II, scene ii

--Enobarbus, Act II, scene ii

--Cleopatra, Act II, scene v

--Enobarbus, Act II, scene vi

--Caesar, Act III, scene ii

--Antony, Act III, scene xi

--Antony, Act III, scene xi

--Caesar, Act III, scene xii

--Antony, Act III, scene xiii

--Enobarbus, Act III, scene xiii

--Antony, Act III, scene xiii

--Antony, Act III, scene xiii

--Antony, Act III, scene xiii

--Enobarbus, Act III, scene xiii

--Enobarbus, Act III, scene xiii

--Antony, Act IV, scene iv

--Cleopatra, Act IV, scene xiii

--Cleopatra, Act IV, scene xiii

--Antony, Act IV, scene xiv

--Antony, Act IV, scene xiv

--Antony, Act IV, scene xiv

--Cleopatra, Act IV, scene xv

--Cleopatra, Act IV, scene xv

--Cleopatra, Act V, scene ii

--Cleopatra, Act V, scene ii

--Cleopatra, Act V, scene ii

--Clown, Act V, scene ii

--Clown, Act V, scene ii

--Cleopatra, Act V, scene ii

Hamlet, Act I, scene ii

Hamlet, Act I, scene ii

Hamlet, Act I, scene ii

Ophelia, Act I, scene iii

Polonius, Act I, scene iii

Polonius, Act I, scene iii

Marcellus, Act I, scene iv

Hamlet, Act I, scene v

Gertrude, Act II, scene ii

Hamlet, Act II, scene ii

Hamlet, Act II, scene ii

Hamlet, Act II, scene ii

Hamlet, Act II, scene ii

Hamlet, Act II, scene ii

Hamlet, Act II, scene ii

Polonius, Act III, scene i

Hamlet, Act III, scene i

Ophelia, Act III, scene i

Hamlet, Act III, scene i

Gertrude, Act III, scene ii

Hamlet, Act III, scene ii

Hamlet, Act III, scene ii

Hamlet, Act III, scene ii

Claudius, Act III, scene iii

Claudius, Act IV, scene v

Hamlet, Act V, scene i

Laertes, Act V, scene i

Hamlet, Act V, scene ii

Hamlet, Act V, scene ii

Hamlet, Act V, scene ii

Nothing will come of nothing.

Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave

My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty

According to my bond; nor more nor less.

Come not between the dragon and his wrath.

Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides:

Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.

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?

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!

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.

Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,

More hideous, when thou show'st thee in a child

Than the sea-monster!

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is

To have a thankless child!

Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.

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.

Allow not nature more than nature needs,

Man's life is cheap as beast's.

Let not women's weapons, water-drops,

Stain my man's cheeks!

I will do such things,--

What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be

The terrors of the earth.

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!

The art of our necessities is strange,

And can make vile things precious.

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.

There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

The prince of darkness is a gentleman.

He's mad, that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health, a boy's love, or a whore's oath.

When we our betters see baring our woes

We scarcely think our miseries our foes.

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.

You are not worth the dust which the rude wind

Blows in your face.

She that herself will sliver and disbranch

From her material sap, perforce must wither

And come to deadly use.

Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile:

Filths savour but themselves.

It is the stars,

The stars above us, govern our conditions.

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?

Get thee glass eyes;

And like a scurvy politician, seem

To see the things thou dost not.

When we are born, we cry that we are come

To this great stage of fools.

There thou mightst behold the great image of authority: a dog's obeyed in office.

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.

Reason in madness!

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.

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.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair.

Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,

Showed like a rebel's whore.

If you can look into the seeds of time,

And say which grain will grow, and which will not,

Speak.

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.

If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me.

There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face.

Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it; he died

As one that had been studied in his death,

To throw away the dearest thing he ow'd,

As 'twere a careless trifle.

Stars, hide your fires!

Let not light see my black and deep desires.

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be

What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature;

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness

To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great;

Art not without ambition; but without

The illness should attend it.

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; make thick my blood,

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature's mischief!

Look like the innocent flower,

But be the serpent under it.

I have no spur

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself

And falls on the other.

I dare do all that may become a man;

Who dares do more, is none.

I have given suck, and know

How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,

And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn

As you have done to this.

Screw your courage to the sticking-place.

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee;

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees

Is left this vault to brag of.

To show an unfelt sorrow is an office

Which the false man does easy.

Nought's had, all's spent

Where our desire is got without content.

'Tis safer to be that which we destroy

Than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy.

There 's daggers in men's smiles.

What's done is done.

I am in blood

Stepp'd in so far, that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o'er.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.

When our actions do not,

Our fears do make us traitors.

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell;

Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace,

Yet grace must still look so.

Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak

Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.

Out, damned spot! out, I say!

Those he commands move only in command,

Nothing in love: now does he feel his title

Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe

Upon a dwarfish thief.

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: I have supp'd full with horrors;

Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts

Cannot once start me.

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.

Now, as fond fathers,

Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch,

Only to stick it in their children's sight

For terror, not to use, in time the rod

Becomes more mocked than feared; so our decrees,

Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead;

And liberty plucks justice by the nose;

The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart

Goes all decorum.

Our doubts are traitors

And makes us lose the good we oft might win

By fearing to attempt.

When maidens sue,

Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel,

All their petitions are as freely theirs

As they themselves would owe them.

We must not make a scarecrow of the law,

Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,

And let it keep one shape, till custom make it

Their perch and not their terror.

The jury, passing on the prisoner's life,

May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two

Guiltier than him they try.

The jewel that we find, we stoop and take 't

Because we see it; but what we do not see

We tread upon and never think of it.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.

Mercy is not itself that oft looks so;

Pardon is still the nurse of second woe.

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,

Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,

The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,

Become them with one half so good a grace

As mercy does.

The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.

O, it is excellent

To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous

To use it like a giant.

Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,

For every pelting, petty officer

Would use his heaven for thunder,

Nothing but thunder!--Merciful Heaven,

Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt

Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak

Than the soft myrtle; but man, proud man,

Drest in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,

His glassy essence, like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven

As make the angels weep, who, with our spleens,

Would all themselves laugh mortal.

Great men may jest with saints; 't is wit in them,

But in the less foul profanation.

That in the captain's but a choleric word

Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

Authority, though it err like others,

Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself

That skins the vice o' the top.

Is this her fault or mine?

The tempter or the tempted, who sins most? Ha!

Not she; nor doth she tempt; but it is I

That, lying by the violet in the sun,

Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,

Corrupt with virtuous season.

Thieves for their robbery have authority

When judges steal themselves.

O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,

With saints dost bait thy hook!

Most dangerous

Is that temptation that doth goad us on

To sin in loving nature.

O perilous mouths,

That bear in them one and the self-same tongue,

Either of condemnation or approof;

Bidding the law make court'sy to their will,

Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite,

To follow as it draws!

The miserable have no other medicine,

But only hope.

Be absolute for death; either death or life

Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:

If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing

That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art,

Servile to all the skyey influences,

That dost this habitation where thou keep'st

Hourly afflict. Merely, thou art death's fool;

For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,

And yet runn'st toward him still.

If thou art rich, thou 'rt poor;

For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows,

Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey,

And death unloads thee.

The sense of death is most in apprehension,

And the poor beetle that we tread upon

In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great

As when a giant dies.

If I must die,

I will encounter darkness as a bride,

And hug it in mine arms.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;

This sensible warm motion to become

A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;

To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about

The pendent world; or to be worse than worst

Of those that lawless and incertain thought

Imagine howling!--'t is too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life

That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment

Can lay on nature is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

No might nor greatness in mortality

Can censure scape; back-wounding calumny

The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong

Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?

He who the sword of heaven will bear

Should be as holy as severe,

Pattern in himself to know

Grace to stand, and virtue go;

More nor less to others paying

Than by self-offenses weighing.

Shame to him whose cruel striking

Kills for faults of his own liking!

O, what may man within him hide,

Though angel on the outward side!

There is scarce truth enough alive to make societies secure, but security enough to make fellowship accurst.

Music oft hath such a charm

To make bad good, and good provoke to harm.

Truth is truth

To the end of reckoning.

Harp not on that, nor do not banish reason

For inequality; but let your reason serve

To make the truth appear where it seems hid,

And hide the false seems true.

They say, best men are moulded out of faults,

And, for the most, become much more the better

For being a little bad.

Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;

Like doth quit like, and measure still for measure.

Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,

Could ever hear by tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth.

Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;

And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.

And therefore is Love said to be a child,

Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.

But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,

Than that which withering on the virgin thorn

Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness.

O hell! to choose love with another's eye.

Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.

A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing.

We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,

Have with our needles created both one flower,

Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,

Both warbling of one song, both in one key,

As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds,

Had been incorporate. So we grew together,

Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,

But yet an union in partition;

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;

So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;

Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,

Due but to one and crowned with one crest,

And will you rent our ancient love asunder,

To join with men in scorning your poor friend?

It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly:

Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,

Though I alone do feel the injury.

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Night's swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,

And yonder shines Aurora's harbinger;

At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there,

Troop home to churchyards.

My Oberon! what visions have I seen!

Methought I was enamoured of an ass.

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.

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

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 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.

And 'tragical', my noble lord, it is,

For Pyramus therein doth kill himself,

Which when I saw rehearsed, I must confess,

Made mine eyes water; but more 'merry' tears

The passion of loud laughter never shed.

For never anything can be amiss,

When simpleness and duty tender it.

I love not to see wretchedness o'ercharged,

And duty in his service perishing.

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve;

Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time.

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this, and all is mended,

That you have but slumber'd here

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding, but a dream,

Gentles, do not reprehend;

If you pardon, we will mend.

And, as I am an honest Puck

If we have unearnéd luck,

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.

For when my outward action doth demonstrate

The native act and figure of my heart

In compliment extern, 'tis not long after

But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.

Even now, now, very now, an old black ram

Is tupping your white ewe.

Your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.

Though in the trade of war I have slain men,

Yet do I hold it very stuff o' the conscience

To do no contrived murder: I lack iniquity

Sometimes to do me service.

Thus do I ever make my fool my purse.

The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.

But words are words; I never yet did hear

That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear.

Knavery's plain face is never seen till us'd.

O! I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.

O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!

Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used; exclaim no more against it.

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit and lost without deserving.

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.

O! beware, my lord, of jealousy;

It is the green-ey'd monster which doth mock

The meat it feeds on.

Think'st thou I'd make a life of jealousy,

To follow still the changes of the moon

With fresh suspicions? No; to be once in doubt,

Is once to be resolved.

If she be false, O! then heaven mocks itself.

O curse of marriage,

That we can call these delicate creatures ours,

And not their appetites! I had rather be a toad,

And live upon the vapour of a dungeon,

Than keep a corner in the thing I love

For others' uses.

Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore,

Be sure of it; give me the ocular proof;

Or, by the worth of mine eternal soul,

Thou hadst been better have been born a dog

Than answer my wak'd wrath.

Who would not make her husband a cuckold, to make him a monarch?

Heaven me such uses send,

Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend.

O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade

Justice to break her sword. One more, one more!

Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee,

And love thee after. One more, and that's the last!

So sweet was ne'er so fatal. I must weep,

But they are cruel tears. This sorrow's heavenly;

It strikes where it doth love. She wakes.

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: then, must you speak

Of one that lov'd 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; of one whose subdu'd eyes

Albeit unused to the melting mood,

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees

Their med'cinable gum. Set you down this;

And say besides, that in Aleppo once,

Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk

Beat a Venetian and traduc'd the state,

I took by the throat the circumcised dog,

And smote him thus.

I kissed thee ere I killed thee, no way but this,

Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.

Is love a tender thing? it is too rough,

Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

If love be rough with you, be rough with love;

Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?

Deny thy father and refuse thy name;

Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,

And I'll no longer be a Capulet.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose,

By any other word would smell as sweet.

Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books,

But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.

Good-night, good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow

That I shall say good-night till it be morrow.

For naught so vile that on the earth doth live

But to the earth some special good doth give;

Nor aught so good but, strain'd from that fair use,

Revolts from true birth, stumbling on the abuse:

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;

And vice sometimes by action dignified.

Come, gentle night, — come, loving black brow'd night,

Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die,

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of Heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night,

And pay no worship to the garish sun.

Where be these enemies? Capulet! Montague!

See, what a scourge is laid upon your hate,

That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!

And I, for winking at your discords too,

Have lost a brace of kinsmen: all are punish'd.

For never was a story of more woe

Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.

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.

You taught me language; and my profit on't

Is, I know how to curse.

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:

Ding-dong.

Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell.

What's past is prologue.

I' the commonwealth I would by contraries

Execute all things; for no kind of traffic

Would I admit; no name of magistrate;

Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,

And use of service, none; contract, succession,

Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;

No use or metal, corn, or wine, or oil;

No occupation; all men idle, all;

And women too, but innocent and pure.

Ebbing men, indeed,

Most often do so near the bottom run

By their own fear or sloth.

All the infections that the sun sucks up

From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him

By inch-mail a disease! his spirits hear me,

And yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch,

Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' the mire,

Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark

Out of my way, unless he bid 'em: but

For every trifle are they set upon me;

Sometimes like apes, that mow and chatter at me,

And after bite me; then like hedgehogs, which

Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount

Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I

All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues

Do hiss me into madness.

When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian.

Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

Full many a lady

I have eyed with best regard, and many a time

The harmony of their tongue hath into bondage

Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues

Have I liked several women; never any

With so full soul, but some defect in her

Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed,

And put it to the foil.

Some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone.

Most poor matters point to rich ends.

Thought is free.

He that dies pays all debts.

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.

I'll be sworn 'tis true: travellers ne'er did lie,

Though fools at home condemn 'em.

The rarer action is

In virtue than in vengeance.

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-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

I have been in such a pickle, since I saw you last, that, I fear me, will never out of my bones: I shall not fear fly-blowing.

Where the bee sucks, there suck I;

In a cowslip's bell I lie;

There I cough where 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.

If music be the food of love, play on;

Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die. —

That strain again! It had a dying fall:

O, it came oer my ear, like the sweet sound

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour. Enough! No more.

'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.

Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man has: but I am a great eater of beef and I believe that does harm to my wit.

Is it a world to hide virtues in?

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.

Oh Time, thou must untangle this, not I;

It is too hard a knot for me to untie.

Youth's a stuff will not endure.

She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,

Feed on her damask cheek: she pin'd in thought,

And, with a green and yellow melancholy,

She sat like Patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief.

Then let thy love be younger than thyself,

Or thy affection cannot hold the bent;

For women are as roses, whose fair flower

Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

Now is the woodcock near the gin.

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool;

And to do that well craves a kind of wit:

He must observe their mood on whom he jests,

The quality of persons, and the time,

And, like the haggard, cheque at every feather

That comes before his eye. This is a practise

As full of labour as a wise man's art

For folly that he wisely shows is fit;

But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit.

O, world, how apt the poor are to be proud!

If one should be a prey, how much the better

To fall before the lion than the wolf!

Love's night is noon.

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.

I hate ingratitude more in a man

Than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,

Or any taint of vice whose strong corruption

Inhabits our frail blood.

Out of the jaws of death.

In nature there's no blemish but the mind;

None can be called deformed but the unkind.

Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil

Are empty trunks o'erflourish'd by the devil.

That, that is, is.

Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.