C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Shakespeare

A barren detested vale, you see it is;

The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean,

O’ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe.

A countenance more

In sorrow than in anger.

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

A fellow by the hand of nature mark’d,

Quoted, and sign’d, to do a deed of shame.

A general welcome from his grace

Salutes ye all: This night he dedicates

To fair content, and you: none here, he hopes

In all this noble bevy, has brought with her

One care abroad: he would have all as merry

As first-good company, good wine, good welcome

Can make good people.

A good old man, sir. He will be talking; as they say,

When the age is in, the wit is out.

A grievous burthen was thy birth to me;

Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy.

A heavier task could not have been impos’d,

Than I to speak my griefs unspeakable.

A hundred thousand welcomes; I could weep,

And I could laugh; I am light and heavy; Welcome.

A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear

Of him that hears it, never in the tongue

Of him that makes it.

A lioness with udders all drawn dry,

Lay couching, head on ground, with catlike watch,

When that the sleeping man should stir; for ’tis

The royal disposition of that beast

To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead.

A little fire is quickly trodden out;

Which, being suffer’d, rivers cannot quench.

A maid

That paragons description and wild fame;

One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens,

And in the essential vesture of creation

Does tire the ingener.

A merrier man,

Within the limit of becoming mirth,

I never spent an hour’s talk withal:

His eye begets occasion for his wit;

For every object that the one doth catch,

The other turns to a mirth-moving jest.

A merry heart goes all the day,

A sad tires in a mile.

A peace is of the nature of a conquest;

For then both parties nobly are subdued,

And neither party loser.

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.

A red morn that ever yet betoken’d

Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,

Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,

Gust and foul flaws to herdsmen and to herds.

A rotten carcass of a boat, not rigged,

Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats

Instinctively have quit it.

A stony adversary, an inhuman wretch,

Uncapable of pity, void and empty

From any dram of mercy.

A substitute shines brightly as a king

Until a king be by, and then his state

Empties itself, as doth an inland brook

Into the main of waters.

A surfeit of the sweetest things

The deepest loathing to the stomach brings.

A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman,

Fram’d in the prodigality of nature,

Young, valiant, wise, and, no doubt right royal;

The spacious world cannot again afford.

A table full of welcome makes scarce one dainty dish.

A tardiness in nature,

Which often leaves the history unspoke,

That it intends to do.

A tear for pity and a hand

Open as day for melting charity.

A thousand hearts are great within my bosom:

Advance our standards, set upon our foes;

Our ancient word of courage, fair St. George,

Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons!

Upon them! Victory sits upon our helms.

A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion,

To pray for them that have done scathe to us.

A woman impudent and mannish grown

Is not more loath’d than an effiminate man.

A woman mov’d is like a fountain troubled,

Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.

A wretched soul, bruis’d with adversity,

We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;

But were we burden’d with like weight of pain,

As much, or more, we should ourselves complain.

Abandon all remorse;

On horror’s head horrors accumulate.

According to his virtue let us use him,

With all respect and rites of burial.

Affection is a coal that must be cool’d:

Else, suffer’d, it will set the heart on fire.

Affliction is enamor’d of thy parts,

And thou art wedded to calamity.

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale

Her infinite variety.

Ah me, how weak a thing

The heart of woman is!

Ah, what a sign it is of evil life,

Where death’s approach is seen so terrible!

Ah! that deceit should steal such gentle shape,

And with a virtuous visard hide deep vice.

Ah! when the means are gone, that buy this praise,

The breath is gone whereof this praise is made.

Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye

Than twenty of their swords.

Alas, how is ’t with you,

That you do bend your eye on vacancy,

And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?

Alas! he has banish’d me his bed already;

His love too long ago: I am old, my lords,

And all the fellowship I hold now with him

Is only my obedience. What can happen

To me, above this wretchedness?

Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we;

For, such as we are made of, such we be.

Alas! to make me

The fixed figure of the time, for scorn

To point his slow and moving finger at.

All days are nights to see till I see thee,

And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.

All his mind is bent to holiness,

To number Ave-Maries on his beads.

All is confounded, all!

Reproach and everlasting shame

Sits mocking in our plumes.

All is not well;

I doubt some foul play.

All men’s faces are true, whatsome’er their hands are.

All the contagion of the south light on you,

You shames of Rome! you herd of—boils and plagues

Plaster you o’er; that you may be abhorr’d

Further than seen, and one infect another

Against the wind a mile!

All the infections that the sun sucks up

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

By inch-meal a disease!

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.

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.

All tongues speak of him, and the bleared sights,

Are spectacled to see him: your prattling nurse

Into a rapture lets her baby cry,

While she chats him: the kitchen malkin pins

Her richest lockram ’bout her reechy neck,

Clambering the walls to eye him. stalls, bulks, windows,

Are smother’d up, leads fill’d, and ridges hors’d

With variable complexions; all agreeing

In earnestness to see him.

Although

The air of paradise did fan the house,

And angels offic’d all; I will be gone.

Ambition’s like a circle on the water,

Which never ceases to enlarge itself,

’Till by broad spreading it disperse to nought.

An evil soul producing holy witness

Is like a villain with a smiling cheek;

A goodly apple rotten at the heart;

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven:

Shall I lay perjury upon my soul?

No, not for Venice.

An old man, broken with the storms of state,

Is come to lay his weary bones among ye;

Give him a little earth for charity!

And all my mother came into mine eyes

And gave me up to tears.

And all the gods go with you! upon your sword

Sit laurel victory; and smooth success

Be strew’d before your feet.

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shape and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks has strong imagination

That if he would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or in the night imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear?

And be these juggling fiends no more believ’d,

That palter with us in a double sense:

That keep the word of promise to our ear,

And break it to our hope.

And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two,

And sleeps again.

And do as adversaries do in law:

Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.

And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,

Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.

And her sunny locks

Hang on her temples like a golden fleece.

And his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound.

And his chin new reap’d,

Show’d like a stubble-land at harvest-home.

And, like a strutting player, whose conceit

Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich

To hear the wooden dialogue and sound

’Twixt his stretch’d footing and the scaffoldage.

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.”

And many an old man’s sigh, and many a widow’s,

And many an orphan’s water-standing eye—

Men for their sons’, wives for their husbands’ fate,

And orphans for their parents’ timeless death,—

Shall rue the hour that ever thou wast born.

And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,

And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot;

And thereby hangs a tale.

And steal immortal kisses from her lips;

Which even in pure and vestal modesty,

Still blush as thinking their own kisses sin.

And teach me how

To name the bigger light, and how the less,

That burn by day and night.

And then it started like a guilty thing

Upon a fearful summons.

And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school.

And then, the justice;

In fair round belly, with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances,

And so he plays his part.

And there at Venice gave

His body to that pleasant country’s earth,

And his pure soul unto his captain Christ,

Under whose colours he had fought so long.

And to add greater honours to his age

Than man could give him, he died fearing God.

And whatsoever else shall hap to-night,

Give it an understanding, but no tongue.

And where two raging fires meet together

They do consume the thing that feeds their fury.

And wilt thou still be hammering treachery,

To tumble down thy husband and thyself

From top of honour to disgrace’s feet?

Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!—

Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn’d,

Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell,

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou comest in such questionable shape

That I will speak to thee.

Anger’s my meat; I sup upon myself

And so shall starve with feeding.

Are there no stones in heaven

But what serve for the thunder?

Are you call’d forth from out a world of men,

To slay the innocent?

Art thou so bare, and full of wretchedness,

And fear’st to die? famine is in thy cheeks,

Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes,

Content and beggary hang upon thy back,

The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law.

As ’tis ever common

That men are merriest when they are from home.

As false

As air, as water, as wind, as sandy earth;

As fox to lamb; as wolf to heifer’s calf;

Pard to the hind, or stepdame to her son.

As fast lock’d up in sleep, as guiltless labor,

When it lies starkly in the traveller’s bones.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;

They kill us for their sport.

As for my wife,

I would you had her spirit in such another:

The third o’ the world is yours; which with a snaffle,

You may pace easy, but not such a wife.

As I have seen a swan

With bootless labour swim against the tide

And spend her strength with over-matching waves.

As in a theatre, the eyes of men,

After a well-grac’d actor leaves the stage,

Are idly bent on him that enters next,

Thinking his prattle to be tedious.

As sweet and musical

As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair;

And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods

Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.

As when the golden sun salutes the morn,

And, having gilt the ocean with his beams,

Gallops the zodiac in his glistering coach,

And overlooks the highest-peering hills.

As you from crimes would pardon’d be,

Let your indulgence set me free.

Ask God for temperance; that’s the appliance only

Which your disease requires.

At lovers’ perjuries,

They say, Jove laughs.

At my nativity

The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,

Of burning cressets; and, at my birth,

The frame and huge foundation of the earth

Shaked like a coward.

At once, good night—

Stand not upon the order of your going,

But go at once.

At your age,

The hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble,

And waits upon the judgment.

Authority bears so credent bulk,

That no particular scandal once can touch:

But it confounds the breather.

Avaunt! and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!

Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;

Thou hast no speculation in those eyes,

Which thou dost glare with!

Away and mock the time with fairest show;

False face must hide what false heart doth know.

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 regions of thick-ribbed ice;

To be imprison’d in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about

The pendant world.

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.

“Ay,” quoth my uncle Gloucester,

“Small herb have grace, great weeds do grow apace:”

And since, methinks, I would not grow so fast,

Because sweet flowers are slow, and weeds make haste.

Be advis’d;

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot

That it do singe yourself; we may outrun,

By violent swiftness, that which we run at,

And lose by over-running.

Be as just and gracious unto me,

As I am confident and kind to thee.

Be just and fear not:

Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s,

Thy God’s, and truth’s.

Be merry, and employ your chiefest thoughts

To courtship and such fair ostents of love

As shall conveniently become you there.

Be stirring as the time; be fire with fire;

Threaten the threat’ner and outface the brow

Of bragging horror: so shall inferior eyes,

That borrow their behaviours from the great,

Grow great by your example and put on

The dauntless spirit of resolution.

Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France;

For ere thou can’st report I will be there,

The thunder of my cannon shall be heard;

So hence! Be thou the trumpet of our wrath.

Be thou assur’d, if words be made of breath,

And breath of life, I have no life to breathe

What thou hast said to me.

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good,

A shining glass, that fadeth suddenly;

A flower that dies, when first it ’gins to bud;

A brittle glass, that’s broken presently;

A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,

Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.

And as good lost is seld or never found,

As fading gloss no rubbing will refresh,

As flowers dead lie wither’d on the ground,

As broken glass no cement can redress,

So beauty blemish’d once, for ever’s lost,

In spite of physic, painting, pain and cost.

Before the curing of a strong disease,

Even in the instant of repair and health,

The fit is strongest; evils that take leave,

On their departure most of all show evil.

Behold the threaden sails,

Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,

Draw the huge bottoms through the furrow’d sea,

Breasting the lofty surge.

Behold, my lords,

Although the print be little, the whole matter

And copy of the father, eye, nose, lip,

The trick of ’s frown, his forehead, nay, the valley,

The pretty dimples of his chin and cheek; his smiles;

The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger.

Bell, book and candle shall not drive me back,

When gold and silver becks me to come on.

Between the acting of a dreadful thing,

And the first motion, all the interim is

Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream;

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.

Bid that welcome

Which comes to punish us, and we punish it

Seeming to bear it lightly.

Bid them come forth and hear me,

Or at their chamber-door I’ll beat the drum

Till it cry sleep to death.

Bind up those tresses. O, what love I note

In the fair multitude of those her hairs!

Where but by chance a silver drop hath fallen,

Even to that drop ten thousand wiry friends

Do glue themselves in sociable grief,

Like true, inseparable, faithful loves,

Sticking together in calamity.

Bleed, bleed, poor country!

Great Tyranny! lay thou thy basis sure,

For goodness dares not check thee!

Blow wind, swell billow, and swim bark!

The storm is up, and all is on the hazard.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude;

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!

You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d 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 moulds, all germens spill at once,

That make ungrateful man.

Blow, wind! come, wrack!

At least we’ll die with harness on our back.

Bold adversity,

Cries out for noble York and Somerset,

To beat assailing death from his weak legions:

And whiles the honorable captain there

Drops bloody sweat from his war-wearied limbs.

Bosom up my counsel,

You’ll find it wholesome.

Brave conquerors! for so you are,

That war against your own affections,

And the huge army of the world’s desires.

Bravest at the last,

She levell’d at our purposes, and, being royal,

Took her own way.

Brutus and Cæsar: what should be in Cæsar?

Why should that name be sounded more than yours?

Write them together, yours is as fair a name;

Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;

Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with them,

Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Cæsar.

Now in the names of all the gods at once,

Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed,

That he is grown so great?

But all his mind is bent to holiness,

To number Ave-Maries on his beads;

His champions are the prophets and apostles,

His weapons only saws of sacred writ,

His study is his tilt-yard, and his loves

Are brazen images of canonized saints.

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.

But he that filches from me my good name

Robs me of that which not enriches him

And makes me poor indeed.

But Heaven hath a hand in these events;

To whose high will we bound our calm contents.

But her’s, which through the crystal tears gave light,

Shone like the moon in water seen by night.

But Hercules himself must yield to odds;

And many strokes, though with a little axe,

Hew down and fell the hardest-timber’d oak.

But if it be a sin to covet honour,

I am the most offending soul alive.

But love is blind, and lovers cannot see

The pretty follies that themselves commit.

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.

But screw your courage to the sticking place,

And we’ll not fail.

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.

But virtue never will be mov’d,

Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven.

But we all are men,

In our own natures frail; and capable

Of our flesh, few are angels.

But when I tell him he hates flatterers,

He says he does, being then most flattered.

But when the fox hath once got in his nose,

He’ll soon find means to make the body follow.

But yesterday the word of Cæsar might

Have stood against the world; now lies he there,

And none so poor to do him reverence.

But yet,—

I do not like but yet, it does allay

The good precedence; fye upon but yet;

But yet is as a gaoler to bring forth

Some monstrous malefactor.

But, O vain boast!

Who can control his fate?

But, poor old man, thou prunest a rotten tree,

That cannot so much as a blossom yield

In lieu of all thy pains and husbandry.

But, soft: behold! lo, where it comes again!

I’ll cross it, though it blast me.—Stay, illusion!

If thou hast any sound, or use a voice,

Speak to me.

By God, I cannot flatter: I do defy

The tongues of soothers; but a braver place

In my heart’s love, hath no man than yourself;

Nay, task me to my word; approve me, lord.

By heaven, I had rather coin my heart,

And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring

From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash,

By any indirection.

By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death

Will seize the doctor, too.

By noting of the lady I have mark’d

A thousand blushing apparitions

To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames,

In angel whiteness bear away those blushes.

Can it be that modesty may more betray

Our sense than woman’s lightness?

Can such things be,

And overcome us like a summer’s cloud,

Without our special wonder?

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d,

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?

Therein the patient

Must minister to himself.

Throw physic to the dogs; I’ll none of it.

Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,

And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.

Celerity is never more admired

Than by the negligent.

Ceremony was but devis’d at first

To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes,

Recanting goodness, sorry ere ’tis shown.

Chain me with roaring bears;

Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house,

O’er-covered 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 of my sweet Love.

Chide him for faults, and do it reverently,

When you perceive his blood inclined to mirth.

Civil dissension is a viperous worm

That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth.

Come the three corners of the world in arms,

And we shall shock them. Naught shall make us rue,

If England to itself do rest but true.

Come what come may;

Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

Come, and take choice of all my library,

And so beguile thy sorrow.

Come, gentlemen, we sit too long on trifles,

And waste the time, which looks for other revels.

Come, sit down, every mother’s son, and rehearse your parts.

Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell!

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark

To cry, hold, hold!

Comets importing change of times and states,

Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky

And with them scourge the bad revolting stars.

Compare her face with some that I shall show,

And it will make thee think thy swan a crow.

Conceit, more rich in matter than in words,

Brags of his substance, not of ornament:

They are but beggars that can count their worth.

Confess yourself to heaven;

Repent what’s past; avoid what is to come.

Conscience is but a word that cowards use,

Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.

Consideration, like an angel came

And whipp’d the offending Adam out of him,

Leaving his body as a paradise,

To envelope and contain celestial spirits.

Contention, like a horse

Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose,

And bears down all before him.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

Cowards die many times before their deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.

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.

Crabbed age and youth cannot live together;

Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care;

Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather;

Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare.

Youth is full of sport, age’s breath is short;

Youth is nimble, age is lame;

Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold;

Youth is wild, and age is tame.

Age, I do abhor thee; youth I do adore thee.

Cupid is a knavish lad,

Thus to make poor females mad.

Custom calls me to ’t—

What custom wills, in all things should we do ’t?

Daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,

Or Cytherea’s breath; pale primroses,

That die unmarried ere they can behold

Bright Phœbus 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!

Danger knows full well,

That Cæsar is more dangerous than he:

We are two lions litter’d in one day,

And I the elder and more terrible.

Death lies on her like an untimely frost

Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.

Death makes no conquest of this conqueror;

For now he lives in Fame, though not in life.

Defect of manners, want of government,

Pride, haughtiness, opinion, and disdain;

The least of which, haunting a nobleman,

Loseth men’s hearts, and leaves behind a stain

Upon the beauty of all parts besides;

Beguiling them of commendation.

Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionably,

That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them.

But I,—that am not shap’d for sportive tricks,

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;

I that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty,

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph.

Didst thou never hear

That things ill got had ever bad success?

Direct not him, whose way himself will choose;

’Tis breath thou lack’st, and that breath wilt thou lose.

Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth

In strange eruptions; oft the teeming earth

Is with a kind of colic pinch’d and vex’d

By the imprisoning of unruly wind

Within her womb; which, for enlargement striving,

Shakes the old beldame earth, and topples down

Steeples and moss-grown towers.

Diseases desperate grown

By desperate appliance are reliev’d,

Or not at all.

Disguise, I see, thou art a wickedness,

Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.

How easy is it for the proper false

In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms!

Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we:

For, such as we are made of, such are we.

Divinely bent to meditation;

And in no worldly suits would he be mov’d,

To draw him from his holy exercise.

Divines and dying men may talk of hell,

But in my heart her several torments dwell.

Do not swear at all;

Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,

Which is the god of my idolatry,

And I’ll believe thee.

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,

Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;

Whilst, like a puff’d and reckless libertine,

Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,

And recks not his own road.

Do not, for ever, with thy veiled lids

Seek for thy noble father in the dust;

Thou know’st ’tis common; all that lives must die,

Passing through nature to eternity.

Do not, for one repulse, forego the purpose

That you resolv’d to effect.

Dost thou now fall over to my foes?

Thou wear a lion’s hide! doff it for shame,

And hang a calf’s skin on those recreant limbs.

Doubt thou the stars are fire;

Doubt that the sun doth more;

Doubt truth to be a liar;

But never doubt, I love.

Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills,

They shall be fam’d; for there the sun shall greet them,

And draw their honors reeking up to heaven;

Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime.

Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows,

Which show like grief itself, but are not so:

For sorrow’s eye glazed with blinding tears,

Divides one thing entire to many objects.

England, bound in with the triumphant sea,

Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege

Of watery Neptune.

Equality of two domestic powers

Breeds scrupulous faction.

Every night he comes

With musics of all sorts and songs compos’d

To her unworthiness; it nothing steads us

To chide him from our eaves; for he persists

As if his life lay on’t.

Every tongue that speaks

But Romeo’s name speaks heavenly eloquence.

Every wretch, pining and pale before

Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks:

A largess universal, like the sun,

His liberal eye doth give to every one,

Thawing cold fear.

Excusing of a fault

Doth make the fault worse by the excuse.

Expectation whirls me round.

The imaginary relish is so sweet

That it enchants my sense.

Experience is by industry achieved,

And perfected by the swift course of time.

Experience teacheth us

That resolution ’s a sole help at need:

And this, my lord, our honour teacheth us,

That we be bold in every enterprise:

Then since there is no way, but fight or die,

Be resolute, my lord, for victory.

Eyes, look your last!

Arms, take your last embrace! and lips O you

The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss

A dateless bargain to engrossing death.

Fair ladies mask’d are roses in their bud:

Dismask’d, their damask sweet commixture shown,

Are angels veiling clouds, or roses blown.

Fall to them, as you find your stomach serves you:

No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en;—

In brief, sir, study what you most affect.

Famine is in thy cheeks,

Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes,

Contempt and beggary hang upon thy back;

The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law.

Fare thee well;

The elements be kind to thee, and make

Thy spirits all of comfort!

Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars,

That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!

Farewell the neighing steed, and the shrill trump.

The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife.

Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!

Farewell the plumed troops, and the big wars

That make ambition virtue.

Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!

This is the state of man; To-day he puts forth

The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms

And bears his blushing honors thick upon him:

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;

And—when he thinks, good easy man, full surely

His greatness is a-ripening,—nips his root,

And then he falls as I do.

Fat paunches have lean pates; and dainty bits

Make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits.

Fathers that wear rags do make their children blind:

But fathers that bear bags shall see their children kind.

Fie, fie upon her!

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.

Fight, gentlemen of England! fight, bold yeomen!

Draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head!

Spur your proud horses hard, and ride in blood;

Amaze the welkin with your broken staves!

Fit for the mountains and the barb’rous caves,

Where manners ne’er were preach’d.

Follow thy drum;

With man’s blood paint the ground, gules, gules;

Religious canons, civil laws are cruel;

Then what should war be?

For Christian shame, put by this barbarous brawl;

He that stirs next to carve for his own rage,

Holds his soul light; he dies upon his motion.

For government, through high and low and lower,

Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,

Congreeing in a full and natural close,

Like music.

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.

For in the fatness of these pursy times

Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg.

For mine own part, I could be well content

To entertain the lag-end of my life

With quiet hours.

For never yet one hour in his bed

Have I enjoyed the golden dew of sleep,

But have been waked by his timorous dreams.

For oaths are straws, men’s faiths are wafer-cakes,

And hold-fast is the only dog.

For several virtues

Have I lik’d 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: but you, O you,

So perfect, and so peerless, are created

Of every creature’s best!

For some must watch, while some must sleep;

So runs the world away.

For there was never yet philosopher

That could endure the toothache patiently.

For we are old, and on our quick’st decrees

The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time

Steals ere we can effect them.

For youth no less becomes

The light and careless livery that it wears,

Than settled age his sables, and his weeds

Importing health and graveness.

Forbear sharp speeches to her; she’s a lady,

So tender of rebukes that words are strokes,

And strokes death to her.

Fortune is merry,

And in this mood will give us anything.

Fortune, that arrant whore,

Ne’er turns the key to the poor.

Foul cankering rust the hidden treasure frets,

But gold that’s put to use, more gold begets.

Foul deeds will rise,

Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

Foul whisp’rings are abroad; and unnat’ral deeds

Do breed unnat’ral troubles: infected minds

To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.

Foul-cankering rust the hidden treasure frets;

But gold, that’s put to use, more gold begets.

Frailty, thy name is woman!—

A little month, or ere those shoes were old

With which she follow’d my poor father’s body,

Like Niobe, all tears;—why she, even she,

***married with my uncle.

Frame your mind to mirth and merriment,

Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.

From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night,

The hum of either army stilly sounds,

That the fixed sentinels almost receive

The secret whispers of each other’s watch;

Fire answers fire; and through their paly flames,

Each battle sees the other’s umbered face:

Steed threatens steed in high and boastful neighs,

Piercing the night’s dull ear; and from the tents,

The armourers accomplishing the knights,

With busy hammers closing rivets up,

Give dreadful note of preparation.

From his cradle

He was a scholar, and a ripe, and good one;

Exceeding wise, fair spoken, and persuading;

Lofty and sour to them that lov’d him not,

But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer:

*****

And to add greater honors to his age

Than man could give, he died fearing God.

From love of grace,

Lay not that flatt’ring unction to your soul,

That not your trespass, but my madness speaks:

It will but skin and film the ulc’rous place;

Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,

Infects unseen; confess yourself to heav’n;

Repent what’s past, avoid what is to come;

And do not spread the compost on the weeds

To make them ranker.

From this time forth

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

Full many a glorious morning have I seen

Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye,

Kissing with golden face the meadows green,

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy;

Anon permit the basest clouds to ride

With ugly rack on his celestial face,

And from the forlorn world his visage hide,

Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace.

Fye! fye! unknit that threat’ning unkind brow;

And dart not scornful glances from those eyes,

To wound thy lord, thy king, thy governor:

It blots thy beauty, as frosts bite the meads;

Confounds thy fame, as whirlwinds shake fair buds;

And in no sense is meet, or amiable.

Gardener, for telling me these news of woe,

Pray God the plants thou graft’st may never grow.

Get thee glass eyes;

And, like a scurvy politician, seem

To see the things thou dost not.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man’s censure, but reserve by judgment.

Give me another horse,—bind up my wounds,

Have mercy, Jesu!—soft;—I did but dream.—

O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!—

The lights burn blue.—It is now dead midnight.

Cold fearful drops stand on my fearful flesh.

What do I fear? myself?

Give me good proofs of what you have alleged:

’Tis not enough to say—in such a bush

There lies a thief—in such a cave a beast;

But you must show him to me ere I shoot,

Else I may kill one of my straggling sheep.

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.

Give me one kiss, I’ll give it to thee again;

And one for interest, if thou wilt have twain.

Give me some music; music, moody food

Of us that trade in love.

Give me that man

That is not passion’s slave.

Give me the cups;

And let the kettle to the trumpet speak,

The trumpet to the cannoneer without,

The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth.

Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak

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

Give thy thoughts no tongue,

Nor any unproportioned thought his act.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,

Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;

But do not dull thy palm with entertainment

Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware

Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,

Bear it that the opposed may beware of thee;

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;

Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;

For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

*****

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

This above all: To thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Glory is like a circle in the water,

Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,

Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to nought.

Go back; the virtue of your name

Is not here passable.

Go to your bosom;

Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

Go with me, like good angels, to my end;

And, as the long divorce of steel falls on me,

Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice,

And lift my soul to heaven.

God give us leisure for these sights of love!

Once more, adieu!

God shall be my hope,

My stay, my guide and lantern to my feet.

God’s soldier be he!

Had I as many sons as I have hairs,

I would not wish them to a fairer death:

And so his knell is knoll’d.

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.

Good night! good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,

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

Great floods have flown

From simple sources, and great seas have dried

When miracles have by the greatest been denied.

Great men may jest with saints: ’tis 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.

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 garment with his form.

Grief hath two tongues; and never woman yet

Could rule them both without ten women’s wit.

Had I but serv’d my God with half the zeal

I serv’d my king, he would not in mine age

Have left me naked to mine enemies.

Had I power, I should

Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,

Uproar the universal peace, confound

All unity on earth.

Had it pleased Heaven

To try me with affliction; had he rain’d

All kinds of sores and shames on my bare head;

Steep’d me in poverty to the very lips;

Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes;

I should have found in some place of my soul

A drop or patience.

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.

Had she been true,

If Heaven would make me such another world

Of one entire and perfect chrysolite,

I’d not have sold her for it.

Hail, many-colored messenger, that ne’er

Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter;

Who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flowers

Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers;

And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown

My bosky acres, and my unshrubb’d down,

Rich scarf to my proud earth.

Happy in this, she is not yet so old

But she may learn; happier than this,

She is not bred so dull but she can learn;

Happiest of all is, that her gentle spirit

Commits itself to yours to be directed.

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet

Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods

More free from peril than the envious court?

Have I not here the best cards for the game,

To win this easy match?

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.

Have you not heard it said full oft,

A woman’s nay doth stand for nought?

He bears an honorable mind,

And will not use a woman lawlessly.

He can write and read and cast accompt.

O monstrous!

We took him setting of boys’ copies.

Here’s a villain!

He did request me to importune you,

To let him spend his time no more at home,

Which would be great impeachment to his age,

In having known no travel in his youth.

He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines

And darts his light through every guilty hole.

He gave his honours to the world again,

His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace.

He gives the bastinado with his tongue;

Our ears are cudgell’d; not a word of his,

But buffets better than a fist of France:

Zounds! I was never so bethump’d with words,

Since I first called my brother’s father, dad.

He had a fever when he was in Spain,

And when the fit was on him, I did mark

How he did shake; ’tis true, this god did shake:

His coward lips did from their colour fly,

And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world

Did lose his lustre.

He has strangled

His language in his tears.

He hath no friends but what are friends for fear;

Which, in his dearest need, will fly from him.

He is a soldier, fit to stand by Cæsar

And give direction.

He is come to open

The purple testament of bleeding war.

He is no man on whom perfections wait,

That, knowing sin within, will touch the gate.

He is not worthy of the honeycomb

That shuns the hive because the bees have stings.

He is the half-part of a blessed man

Left to be finished by such a she;

And she a fair divided excellence,

Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.

O, two such silver currents, when they join,

Do glorify the banks that bound them in!

He stopp’d the fliers:

And, by his rare example, made the coward

Turn terror into sport; as waves before

A vessel under sail, so men obey’d,

And fell below his stem.

He that commends me to mine own content

Commends me to the thing I cannot get.

He that cuts off twenty years of life

Cuts off so many years of fearing death.

He that doth the ravens feed,

Yea, providently caters for the sparrow.

He that hath a beard is more than a youth;

And he that hath none is less than a man.

He that hath a will to die by himself,

Fears it not from another.

He that is robb’d, not wanting what is stol’n,

Let him not know ’t, and he’s not robb’d at all.

He that is strucken blind cannot forget

The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.

He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;

With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder.

He was a man, take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again.

He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one;

Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading;

Lofty and sour to them that lov’d him not;

But to those men that sought him sweet as summer.

He was indeed the glass

Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.

He was not born to shame:

Upon his brow shame was asham’d to sit;

For ’tis a throne where honour may be crown’d

Sole monarch of the universal earth.

He was perfum’d like a milliner:

And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held

A pouncet-box, which ever and anon

He gave his nose: and still he smil’d and talk’d;

And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,

He call’d them untaught knaves, unmannerly,

To bring a slovenly unhandsome corpse

Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

He wears his faith but as the fashion of

His hat; it ever changes with the next block.

He which hath no stomach to this fight,

Let him depart; his passport shall be made.

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-offences weighing.

Shame to him whose cruel striking

Kills for faults of his own liking!

He’s truly valiant that can wisely suffer

The worst that man can breathe;

And make his wrongs his outsides,

To wear them like his raiment, carelessly;

And ne’er prefer his injuries to his heart,

To bring it into danger.

Heaven doth divide

The state of man in divers functions,

Setting endeavour in continual motion;

To which is fix’d, as an aim or butt,

Obedience.

Heaven is above all yet; there sits a judge,

That no king can corrupt.

Heaven knows, I had no such intent;

But that necessity so bow’d the state,

That I and greatness were compell’d to kiss.

Hell is empty,

And all the devils are here.

Hence,

Horrible villain! or I’ll spurn thine eyes

Like balls before me; I’ll unhair thy head;

Thou shalt be whipt with wire, and stew’d in brine,

Smarting in ling’ring pickle.

Henceforth I’ll bear

Affliction till it do cry out itself,

Enough, enough, and die.

Her eye in heaven

Would through the airy region stream so bright,

That birds would sing, and think it were not night.

Her sighs will make a battery in his breast;

Her tears will pierce into a marble heart;

The tiger will be mild whiles she doth mourn;

And Nero will be tainted with remorse,

To hear and see her plaints.

Her virtues, graced with external gifts,

Do breed love’s settled passions in my heart.

Here are a few of the unpleasant’st words

That ever blotted paper!

Here comes a man of comfort, whose advice

Hath often still’d my brawling discontent.

Here feel we but the penalty of Adam,

The seasons’ difference, as the icy fang

And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind,

Which, when it bites and blows upon my body,

Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say,

“This is no flattery.”

Here I and sorrows sit:

Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.

Here is my journey’s end, here is my birth,

And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.

Here’s our chief guest.

If he had been forgotten,

It had been as a gap in our great feast.

His eye begets occasion for his wit;

For every object that the one doth catch,

The other turns to a mirth-moving jest.

His eye being big with tears,

Turning his face, he put his hand behind him,

And with affection wondrous sensible,

He wrung Bassanio’s hand; and so they parted.

His great offence is dead,

And deeper than oblivion do we bury

The incensing relics of it.

His life is parallel’d

E’en with the stroke and line of his great justice;

He doth with holy abstinence subdue

That in himself which he spurs on his power

To qualify in others.

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!”

His nature is too noble for the world:

He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,

Or Jove for’s power to thunder. His heart’s his mouth;

What his breast forges that his tongue must vent.

His overthrow heap’d happiness upon him;

For then, and not till then, he felt himself,

And found the blessedness of being little.

His promises were, as he then was, mighty;

But his performance, as he is now, nothing.

His silver hairs

Will purchase us a good opinion,

And buy men’s voices to commend our deeds;

It shall be said his judgment rul’d our hands;

Our youths and wildness shall no whit appear,

But all be buried in his gravity.

His virtues

Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against

The deep damnation of his taking-off.

His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles;

His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate;

His tears pure messengers sent from his heart;

His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth.

His years are younger, but his experience old;

His head unmellow’d, but his judgment ripe;

And in a word (for far behind his worth

Come all the praises that I now bestow)

He is complete in feature and in mind,

With all good grace to grace a gentleman.

Honor travels in a strait so narrow,

Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path.

How can tyrants safely govern home,

Unless abroad they purchase great alliance.

How dare the plants look up to heaven, from whence

They have their nourishment?

How far that little candle throws his beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

How hast thou purchased this experience?

By my penny of observation.

How like a winter hath my absence been

From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!

What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!

What old December’s bareness everywhere.

How long a time lies in one little word!

Four lagging winters and four wanton springs

End in a word: such is the breath of kings.

How many ages hence

Shall this our lofty scene be acted over

In states unborn and accents yet unknown.

How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false

As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins

The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars,

Who, inward search’d, have livers white as milk.

How many things by season seasoned are

To their right praise, and true perfection!

How my achievements mock me!

I will go meet them.

How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds

Makes ill deeds done.

How oft, when men are at the point of death,

Have they been merry! which their keepers call

A lightning before death.

How poor are they who have not patience!

What wound did ever heal, but by degrees?

How pregnant, sometimes, his replies are!

A happiness that often madness hits on,

Which sanity and reason could not be

So prosp’rously deliv’r’d of.

How quickly nature falls into revolt

When gold becomes her object!

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 pil’d up

The canker’d heaps of strange-achieved gold;

For this they have been thoughtful to invest

Their sons with arts and martial exercises.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is

To have a thankless child.

How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night,

Like softest music to attending ears!

How slow

This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,

Like to a stepdame, or a dowager,

Long withering out a young man’s revenue.

How sometimes nature will betray its folly,

Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime

To harder bosoms!

How sour sweet music is,

When time is broke, and no proportion kept!

How use doth breed a habit in a man!

Here can I sit alone, unseen of any,

And, to the nightingale’s complaining notes,

Tune my distresses, and record my woes.

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fye on’t! oh, fye! ’tis an unweeded garden,

That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature,

Possess it merely.

How, in one house,

Should many people, under two commands

Hold amity? ’Tis hard; almost impossible.

Hoy-day, what a sweep of vanity comes this way!

Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!

Comets, importing change of times and states,

Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky;

And with them scourge the bad revolting stars,

That have consented unto Henry’s death!

I ’gin to be aweary of the sun,

And wish the estate o’ the world were now undone.

“I am a gentleman.” I’ll be sworn thou art;

Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions and spirit,

Do give thee five-fold blazon.

I am a man

More sinned against than sinning.

I am as true as truth’s simplicity,

And simpler than the infancy of truth.

I am asham’d, that women are so simple

To offer war where they should kneel for peace;

Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,

When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.

I am declined

Into the vale of years.

I am disgrac’d, impeach’d, and baffled here;

Pierc’d to the soul with slander’s venom’d spear.

I am giddy; expectation whirls me ’round.

The imaginary relish is so sweet

That it enchants my sense.

I am glad to see you well;

Horatio,—or I do forget myself.

I am misanthropos, and hate mankind,

For thy part, I do wish thou wert a dog,

That I might love thee something.

I am not covetous for gold,

Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;

It yearns me not if men my garments wear;

Such outward things dwell not in my desires:

But if it be a sin to covet honor

I am the most offending soul alive.

I am not mad; I would to heaven I were!

For then, ’tis like I should forget myself;

O, if I could, what grief should I forget!

I am one … whom the foul blows …

Have so incensed, that I am reckless what

I do to spite the world.

And I another,

So weary with disaster, tugg’d with fortune,

That I would set my life on any chance

To mend it, or be rid of it.

I am one, my liege,

Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world

Have so incens’d that I am reckless what

I do to spite the world.

I am that way going to temptation,

Where prayers cross.

I am thy father’s spirit;

Doom’d for a certain term to walk the night

And, for the day, confin’d to fast in fires,

Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature,

Are burnt and purg’d away.

I beseech you,

Wrest once the law to your authority:

To do a great right, do a little wrong.

I can call up spirits from the vasty deep.—

——Why so can I, or so can any man;

But will they come, when you do call for them?

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.

I cannot but remember such things were

That were most precious to me.

I cannot tell what you and other men

Think of this life; but for my single self,

I had as lief not be as live to be

In awe of such a thing as I myself.

I cannot weep; for all my body’s moisture

Scarce serves to quench my furnace-burning heart.

I charge thee, fling away ambition:

By that sin fell the angels.

I confess it is my nature’s plague

To spy into abuses; and, oft, my jealousy

Shapes faults that are not.

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.

I crave fit disposition for my wife;

Due reference of place, and exhibition;

With such accommodation, and besort,

As levels with her breeding.

I dare do all that may become a man;

Who dares do more, is none.

I did not think to shed a tear

In all my miseries; but thou hast forc’d me,

Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman.

I do defy him, and I spit at him;

Call him a slanderous coward and a villain:

Which to maintain I would allow him odds,

And meet him, were I tied to run afoot

Even to the frozen ridges of the Alps.

I do find it cowardly and vile,

For fear of what might fall, so to prevent

The time of life.

I do not know the man I should avoid

So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;

He is a great observer, and he looks

Quite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,

As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;

Seldom he smiles; and smiles in such a sort

As if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit

That could be moved to smile at anything.

I do present you with a man of mine,

Cunning in music and the mathematics,

To instruct her fully in those sciences.

I do remember an apothecary,—

And hereabouts he dwells,—whom late I noted

In tatter’d weeds, with overwhelming brows,

Culling of simples; meagre were his looks,

Sharp misery had worn him to the bones.

I dreamt my lady came and found me dead,

(Strange dream! that gives a dead man leave to think),

And breath’d such life with kisses in my lips

That I reviv’d, and was an emperor.

I drew this gallant head of war,

And cull’d these fiery spirits from the world,

To outlook conquest and to win renown

Even in the jaws of danger and of death.

I durst, my lord, to wager she is honest,

Lay down my soul at stake: if you think other,

Remove your thought; it doth abuse your bosom.

If any wretch hath put this in your head,

Let heaven requite it with the serpent’s curse!

For, if she be not honest, chaste, and true,

There’s no man happy: the purest of their wives

Is foul as slander.

I grant him bloody,

Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,

Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin

That has a name.

I grant I am a woman; but, withal,

A woman that lord Brutus took to wife;

I grant I am a woman; but, withal,

A woman well reputed; Cato’s daughter,

Think you, I am no stronger than my sex,

Being so father’d and so husbanded?

I had a thing to say,

But I will fit it with some better time.

I had not so much of man in me,

And all my mother came into mine eyes

And gave me up to tears.

I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon,

Than such a Roman.

I had rather be a kitten, and cry mew,

Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers;

I had rather hear a brazen canstick turn’d,

Or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree;

And that would set my teeth nothing on edge,

Nothing so much as mincing poetry;

’Tis like the forc’d gait of a shuffling nag.

I had rather chop this hand off at a blow,

And with the other fling it at thy face,

Than bear so low a sail, to strike to thee.

I hate him for he is a Christian:

But more, for that, in low simplicity,

He lends out money gratis, and brings down

The rate of usance here with us in Venice.

I hate ingratitude more in a man

Than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,

Or any taint of vice, whose strong corruption

Inhabits our frail blood.

I have a letter from her

Of such contents as you will wonder at

The mirth whereof so larded with my matter,

That neither singly can be manifested,

Without the show of both.

I have heard

That guilty creatures sitting at a play,

Have, by the very cunning of the scene,

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaim’d their malefactions;

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

With most miraculous organ.

I have mark’d

A thousand blushing apparitions start

Into her face; a thousand innocent shames

In angel whiteness bear away those blushes;

And in her eye there hath appear’d a fire,

To burn the errors that these princes hold

Against her maiden truth.

I have neither the scholar’s melancholy,

Which is emulation; nor the musician’s,

Which is fantastical; nor the courtier’s,

Which is pride; nor the soldier’s, which is

Ambition; 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 hum’rous sadness.

I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,

Nor actions, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,

To stir men’s blood: I only speak right on.

I have no other but a woman’s reason:

I think him so, because I think him so.

I have offended reputation,

A most unnoble swerving.

——I have seen corruption boil and bubble

’Till it o’errun the stew.

I have seen tempests, when the scolding winds

Have riv’d the knotty oaks, and I have seen

The ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam,

To be exalted with the threat’ning clouds

But never till tonight, never till now,

Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.

I have seen

The dumb men throng to see him, and the blind

To hear him speak: the matrons flung their gloves,

Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchiefs,

Upon him as he pass’d: the nobles bended,

As to Jove’s statue; and the commons made

A shower and thunder, with their caps and shouts:

I never saw the like.

I have seen

When, after execution, judgment hath

Repented o’er his doom.

I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness,

Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy;

***I have sworn thee fair.

I have that within which passeth show;

These, but the trappings and the suits of woe.

I have this while with leaden thoughts been press’d;

But I shall, in a more continuate time,

Strike off this score of absence.

I have ventur’d,

Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,

This many summers in a sea of glory,

But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride

At length broke under me.

I have, as when the sun doth light a storm,

Buried this sigh in wrinkle of a smile:

But sorrow, that is couch’d in seeming gladness,

Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness.

I have

Immortal longings in me.

I hold it cowardice,

To rest mistrustful, where a noble heart

Hath pawn’d an open hand in sign of love.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano:

A stage where every man must play a part.

I knew him tyrannous, and tyrants’ fears

Decrease not, but grow faster than the years.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,

Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows;

Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,

With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.

I know them, yea,

And what they weigh, even to the utmost scruple;

Scambling, out-facing, fashion-mong’ring boys,

That lie, and cog, and flout, deprave, and slander,

Go antickly, and show outward hideousness,

And speak off half a dozen dangerous words,

How they might hurt their enemies, if they durst;

And this is all.

I must go seek some dew-drops here,

And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.

I pr’ythee take thy fingers from my throat;

Sir, though I am not splenetive and rash,

Yet have I something in me dangerous,

Which let thy wiseness fear: away thy hand.

I pray thee cease thy counsel,

Which falls into mine ears as profitless

As water in a sieve.

I pray you, let none of your people stir me;

I have an exposition of sleep come upon me.

I profess not talking: only this,

Let each man do his best.

I rather tell thee what is to be fear’d,

Than what I fear; for always I am Cæsar.

I sat upon a promontory,

And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin’s back,

Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,

That the rude sea grew civil at her song;

And certain stars shot madly from their spheres,

To hear the sea-maid’s music.

I saw a thousand fearful wracks:

A 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,

That woo’d the slimy bottom of the deep,

And mock’d the dead bones that lay scatter’d by.

I saw him beat the surges under him,

And ride upon their backs; be trod the water,

Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted

The surge most swoln that met him.

I see my reputation is at stake:

My fame is shrewdly gor’d.

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;

And if I die, no soul shall pity me:

Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself

Find in myself no pity to myself?

I shall see

The winged vengeance overtake such children.

I so lively acted with my tears

That my poor mistress, moved therewithal,

Wept bitterly.

I swear, ’t is better to be lowly born,

And range with humble livers in content,

Than to be perk’d up in a glistering grief,

And wear a golden sorrow.

I take thy hand, this hand,

As soft as dove’s down, and as white as it;

Or Ethiopian’s tooth, or the fann’d snow,

That’s bolted by the northern blast twice o’er.

I thank you for your voices: thank you:

Your most sweet voices.

I understand thy kisses, and thou mine,

And that’s a feeling disputation.

I well believe

Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know;

And so far will I trust thee.

I will attend my husband, be his nurse,

Diet his sickness, for it is my office.

I will be hang’d, if some eternal villain,

Some busy and insinuating rogue,

Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office,

Have not devis’d this slander.

I will fasten on this sleeve of thine;

Thou art an elm, my husband, I, a vine.

I will go root away

The noisome weeds which without profit suck

The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.

I will not choose what many men desire,

Because I will not jump with common spirits,

And rank me with the barbarous multitudes.

I will wear my heart upon my sleeve

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

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,

I will maintain it with some little cost.

I’ll example you with thievery:

The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction

Robs the vast sea: the moon’s an arrant thief,

And her pale fire she snatches from the sun:

The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves

The moon into salt tears: the earth’s a thief,

That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen

From general excrement: each thing’s a thief.

I’ll give thrice so much land,

To any well deserving friend;

But in the way of bargain, mark me,

I’ll cavil on the ninth part of a hair.

I’ll leave my son my virtuous deeds behind;

And would my father had left me no more!

For all the rest is held at such a rate,

As brings a thousandfold more care to keep,

Than in possession any jot of pleasure.

I’ll put a girdle round about the earth

In forty minutes.

I’ll speak to it, though hell itself should gape,

And bid me hold my peace.

I’ll take thy word for faith, not ask thine oath;

Who shuns not to break one, will sure crack both.

If all the year were playing holidays,

To sport would be as tedious as to work.

If circumstances lead me, I will find

Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed

Within the centre.

If I can catch him once upon the hip,

I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.

If I can do it

By aught that I can speak in his dispraise,

She shall not long continue love to him.

If I can fasten but one cup upon him,

With that which he hath drunk to-night already,

He’ll be as full of quarrel and offense

As my young mistress’ dog.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes,

And in fresh numbers number all your graces,

The age to come would say, “This poet lies;

Such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces.”

If I depart from thee, I cannot live;

And in thy sight to die, what were it else

But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?

*****

To die by thee were but to die in jest;

From thee to die were torture more than death.

If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep,

My dreams presage some joyful news at hand.

If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well

It were done quickly.

If ladies be but young and fair,

They have the gift to know it.

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?

If music be the food of love, play on;

Give me excess of it.

If she do frown, ’tis not in hate of you,

But rather to beget more love in you:

If she do chide, ’tis not to have you gone;

For why, the fools are mad if left alone.

Take no repulse, whatever she doth say;

For—get you gone—she doth not mean—away.

If that the earth could teem with woman’s tears,

Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.

If them deny’st it, twenty times thou liest;

And I will turn thy falsehood to thy heart,

Where it was forged, with my rapier’s point.

If they perceive dissension in our looks

And that within ourselves we disagree,

How will their grudging stomachs be provoked

To wilful disobedience and rebel!

If this letter move him not, his legs cannot,

I’ll give ’t him.

If thou but frown on me, or stir thy foot,

Or teach thy hasty spleen to do me shame,

I’ll strike thee dead. Put up thy sword betime,

Or I’ll so maul you and your toasting-iron,

That you shall think the devil has come from hell.

If thou neglect’st, or dost unwillingly

What I command, I’ll rack thee with old cramps;

Fill all thy bones with aches; make thee roar

That beasts shall tremble at thy din.

If you bethink yourself of any crime

Unreconcil’d as yet to heaven and grace,

Solicit for it straight.

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 favors nor your hate.

If, one by one, you wedded all the world,

Or from the all that are took something good.

To make a perfect woman, she you kill’d

Would be unparallel’d.

In cases of defence, ’tis best to weigh

The enemy more mighty than he seems;

So the proportions of defence are fill’d;

Which of a weak and niggardly projection

Doth, like a miser, spoil his coat with scanting a little cloth.

In each cheek appears a pretty dimple;

Love made those hollows; if himself were slain

He might be buried in a tomb so simple;

Foreknowing well, if there he came to lie,

Why, there Love lived, and there he could not die.

In her days, every man shall eat in safety,

Under his own vine, what he plants; and sing

The merry song of peace to all his neighbours.

In his livery

Walk’d crowns and crownets; realms and islands were

As plates dropp’d from his pocket.

In idle wishes fools supinely stay;

Be there a will, then wisdom finds a way.

In nature there’s no blemish but the mind;

None can be call’d deform’d but the unkind:

Virtue is beauty; but the beauteous evil

Are empty trunks, o’er-flourish’d by the devil.

In persons grafted in a serious trust,

Negligence is a crime.

In silence sad,

Trip we after the night’s shade;

We the globe can compass soon,

Swifter than the wand’ring moon.

In that day’s feats,

*****

He prov’d best man i’ the field, and for his meed

Was brow-bound with the oak.

In the sweetest bud

The eating canker dwells.

In those holy fields,

Over whose acres walk’d those blessed feet

Which, fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d

For our advantage on the bitter cross.

Instructed by the antiquary times,

He must, he is, he cannot but be wise.

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his own conceit

That from her working all his visage wann’d.

It deserves with characters of brass,

A forted residence, ’gainst the tooth of time

And razure of oblivion.

It is a custom,

More honor’d in the breach than the observance.

It is a good divine that follows his

Own instructions; I can easier teach twenty

What were good to be done, than be one

Of the twenty to follow mine own teaching:

The brain may devise laws for the blood; but

A hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree.

It is a great sin to swear unto a sin,

But greater sin to keep a sinful oath.

It is a quarrel most unnatural,

To be reveng’d on him that loveth thee.

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God’s,

When mercy seasons justice.

It is not so with Him that all things knows

As ’tis with us that square our guess by shows:

But most it is presumption in us when

The help of heaven we count the act of men.

It seldom visits sorrow; when it doth,

It is a comforter.

It was about to speak, when the cock crew,

And then it started like a guilty thing

Upon a fearful summons.

Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,

And merrily bent the stile-a:

A merry heart goes all the day,

Your sad tires in a mile-a.

Joy, being altogether wanting,

It doth remember me the more of sorrow.

Jumping o’er times,

Turning the accomplishment of many years

Into an hourglass.

Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks,

Shall win my love.

Kings and mightiest potentates must die,

For that’s the end of human misery.

Know of your youth, examine well your blood,

Whether, if you yield not to your father’s choice,

You can endure the livery of a nun;

For aye to be in shady cloister mewed;

To live a barren sister all your life,

Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.

Thrice blessed they, that master so their blood,

To undergo such maiden pilgrimage.

Know’st thou not any whom corrupting gold

Would tempt unto a close exploit of death?

Lay her i’ the earth;

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

May violets spring!

Lay on, Macduff,

And damn’d be him that first cries “Hold, enough!”

Leave wringing of your hands: Peace; sit you down,

And let me wring your heart: for so I shall,

If it be made of penetrable stuff;

If damned custom have not braz’d it so,

That it be proof and bulwark against sense.

Lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold.

Let but the commons hear this testament—

Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read—

And they would go and kiss dead Cæsar’s wounds

And dip their napkins in his sacred blood,

Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,

And, dying, mention it within their wills,

Bequeathing it as a rich legacy

Unto their issue.

Let come what will, I mean to bear it out,

And either live with glorious victory,

Or die with fame, renown’d for chivalry:

He is not worthy of the honey-comb,

That shuns the hive because the bees have stings.

Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,

Live register’d upon our brazen tombs.

Let Hercules himself do what he may,

The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.

Let me play the fool

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come;

And let my liver rather heat with wine,

Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.

Let me tell you, Cassius, you yourself

Are much condemn’d to have an itching palm.

Let never day nor night unhallow’d pass,

But still remember what the Lord has done.

Let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings:

How some have been depos’d, some slain in war,

Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos’d,

Some poison’d by their wives, some sleeping kill’d,

All murder’d.

Let’s choose executors and talk of wills:

And yet not so, for what can we bequeath

Save our deposed bodies to the ground?

Let’s march without the noise of threat’ning drum.

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.

Let’s teach ourselves that honourable stop,

Not to outsport discretion.

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 idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.

Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,

Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.

Like a man to double business bound,

I stand in pause where I shall first begin,

And both neglect.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

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.

Like the lily,

That once was mistress of the field, and flourished,

I’ll hang my head, and perish.

Like to the time o’ the year between the extremes

Of hot and cold, he was nor sad nor merry.

Live loath’d and long,

Most smiling, smooth, detested parasites,

Courteous destroyers, affable wolves, meek bears,

You fools of fortune, trencher friends, time’s flies,

Cap and knee slaves, vapors, and minute jacks.

Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,

From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,

And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast

The sun ariseth in his majesty;

Who doth the world so gloriously behold,

That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish’d gold.

Look down, you gods,

And on this couple drop a blessed crown.

Look here, upon this picture, and on this,

The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.

Look how the floor of Heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold;

There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims:

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Both grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.

Look to her, Moor; if thou hast eyes to see:

She has deceiv’d her father, and may thee.

Look, the gentle day,

Before the wheels of Phœbus, round about

Dapples the drowsy east with spots of gray.

Look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,

Walks o’er the dew of yon high eastern hill.

Look, the world’s comforter, with weary gait,

His day’s hot task hath ended in the west:

The owl, night’s herald, shrieks—’tis very late;

The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest;

And coal-black clouds, that shadow heaven’s light,

Do summon us to part, and bid good night.

Look, who comes here! a grave unto a soul,

Holding the eternal spirit against her will,

In the vile prison of afflicted breath.

Lord Angelo is precise;

Stands at a guard with envy; scarce confesses

That his blood flows, or that his appetite

Is more to bread than stone.

Love all, trust a few,

Do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy

Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend

Under thy own life’s key: be check’d for silence,

But never tax’d for speech.

Love and meekness, lord,

Become a churchman better than ambition:

Win straying souls with modesty again,

Cast none away.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs;

Being purg’d, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;

Being vex’d, a sea nourished with loving tears;

What is it else? A madness most discreet,

A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove;

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error, and upon me proved;—

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

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

And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.

Love’s heralds should be thoughts,

Which ten times faster glide than the sunbeams,

Driving back shadows over lowering hills.

Lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,

Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;

And when he once obtains the upmost round,

He then unto the ladder turns his back,

Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees

By which he did ascend.

Madam, you have bereft me of all words,

Only my blood speaks to you in my veins.

Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;

Leave gormandizing.

Make thick my blood,

Stop up the access and passage to remorse;

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose.

Make use of time, let not advantage slip;

Beauty within itself should not be wasted:

Fair flowers, that are not gather’d in their prime

Rot and consume themselves in little time.

Making that idiot, laughter, keep men’s eyes,

And strain their cheeks to idle merriment.

Man, proud man!

Dress’d 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.

Master, go on, and I will follow thee

To the last gasp, with truth and loyalty.

May he be suffocate,

That dims the honour of this warlike isle!

May never glorious sun reflex his beams

Upon the country where you make abode!

But darkness and the gloomy shade of death

Environ you till mischief and despair

Drive you to break your necks, or hang yourselves.

May that soldier a mere recreant prove

That means not, hath not, or is not in love!

Mean and mighty, rotting

Together, have one dust.

Mechanic slaves

With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall

Uplift us to the view.

Men at some time are masters of their fates:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves.

Men must endure their going hence,

Even as their coming hither.

Men should be what they seem;

Or those that be not, would they might seem none!

Men so noble,

However faulty, yet should find respect

For what they have been; ’tis a cruelty

To load a falling man.

Men that hazard all

Do it in hope of fair advantages:

A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross.

Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues

We write in water.

Merciful heaven!

Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,

Split’st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,

Than the soft myrtle.

Minutes, hours, days, months, and years,

Pass’d over to the end they were created,

Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.

Ah, what a life were this!

Modest doubt is call’d

The beacon of the wise.

More strange than true. I never may believe

These antique fables, nor these fairy toys.

More water glideth by the mill

Than wots the miller of.

Most fair,

Will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms

Such as will enter at a lady’s ear

And plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?

Murther, though it have no tongue, will speak

With most miraculous organ.

Muse not that I thus suddenly proceed;

For what I will, I will, and there’s an end.

My crown is in my heart, not on my head;

Not deck’d with diamonds, and Indian stones,

Nor to be seen: my crown is call’d content;

A crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.

My desolation does begin to make

A better life.

My heart laments that virtue cannot live

Out of the teeth of emulation.

My lord shall never rest:

I’ll watch him, tame and talk him out of patience:

His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift.

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red:

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak; yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound:

I grant, I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

My noble father,

I do perceive here a divided duty;

To you, I am bound for life and education;

My life and education both do learn me

How to respect you; you are the lord of duty;

I am hitherto your daughter: But here’s my husband.

My plenteous joys,

Wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves

In drops of sorrow.

My resolution’s plac’d, and I have nothing

Of woman in me: Now from head to foot

I am marble-constant.

My salad days;

When I was green in judgment.

My tongue’s use is to me no more

Than an unstringed viol or a harp.

My way of life

Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf

And that which should accompany old age,

As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,

I must not look to have; but, in their stead,

Curses not loud, but deep, mouth-honor, breath,

Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

My will enkindled by mine eyes and ears,

Two traded pilots ’twixt the dangerous shores

Of will and judgment.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:

Words, without thoughts, never to heaven go.

Myself, myself confound!

Heaven, and fortune, bar me happy hours!

Day, yield me not thy light; nor night, thy rest!

Be opposite all planets of good luck

To my proceeding, if, with pure heart’s love,

Immaculate devotion, holy thoughts,

I tender not thy beauteous princely daughter!

Nay, take my life and all, pardon not that;

You take my house, when you do take the prop

That doth sustain my house; you take my life,

When you do take the means whereby I live.

Nay, then, farewell!

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 in the evening,

And no man see me more.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be:

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

Never durst poet touch a pen to write

Until his ink were temper’d with Love’s sighs.

Never give her o’er;

For scorn at first makes after-love the more.

If she do frown, ’tis not in hate of you,

But rather to beget more love in you;

If she do chide, ’tis not to have you gone,

For why, the fools are mad if left alone.

New customs,

Though they be never so ridiculous,

Nay, let ’em be unmanly, yet are followed.

Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops.

Night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast,

And yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger;

At whose approach, ghosts, wand’ring here and there,

Troop home to churchyards.

No longer mourn for me when I am dead,

Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled.

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?

No reckoning made, but sent to my account

With all my imperfections on my head.

No, no! I am but shadow of myself:

You are deceived, my substance is not here.

Nobly he yokes

A smiling with a sigh, as if the sigh

Was that it was, for not being such a smile:

The smile mocking the sigh, that it would fly

From so divine a temple, to commix

With winds that sailors rail at.

Nor aught so good but strained from that fair use,

Revolts from true birth stumbling on abuse.

Not all the water in the rough rude sea

Can wash the balm from an anointed king:

The breath of worldly men cannot depose

The deputy elected by the Lord.

Not poppy, nor mandragora,

Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world

Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep

Which thou ow’dst yesterday.

Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it.

Nought 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 abuse:

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied;

And vice sometime ’s by action dignified!

Now ’tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted;

Suffer them now, and they’ll o’ergrow the garden,

And choke the herbs for want of husbandry.

Now all the youth of England are on fire,

And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;

Now thrive the armorers, and honor’s thought

Reigns solely in the breast of every man.

Now for the bare-pick’d bone of majesty

Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest

And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace.

Now from head to foot

I am marble-constant: now the fleeting moon

Ho planet is of mine.

Now God be praised, that to believing souls,

Gives light in darkness, comfort in despair!

Now good digestion wait on appetite,

And health on both.

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lower’d upon our house,

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now it is the time of night,

That the graves, all gaping wide,

Every one lets forth its sprite,

In the church-way paths to glide.

Now let it work: Mischief, thou art afoot,

Take thou what course thou wilt!

Now spurs the lated traveler apace

To gain the timely inn.

Now the time is come,

That France must veil her lofty-plumed crest,

And let her head fall into England’s lap.

Now the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now, by two-headed Janus,

Nature hath fram’d strange fellows in her time:

Some that will evermore peep through their eyes,

And laugh, like parrots, at a bagpiper;

And other of such vinegar aspect,

That they’ll not show their teeth in way of smile,

Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.

Now, ere the sun advance his burning eye,

The day to cheer, and night’s dank dew to dry.

Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song,

That old and antique song we heard last night;

Methought it did relieve my passion much,

More than light airs and recollected terms

Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times:

Come, but one verse.

Now, good digestion wait on appetite,

And health on both!

O ceremony, show me but thy worth!

What is thy soul of adoration?

Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form,

Creating awe and fear in other men?

O comfort-killing Night, image of hell!

Dim register and notary of shame!

Black stage for tragedies and murders fell!

Vast, sin-concealing chaos! nurse of blame!

Blind, muffled bawd! dark harbor for defame!

Grim cave of death! whispering conspirator

With close-tongued treason and the ravisher!

O conspiracy!

Shams’t 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? Seek none, conspiracy,

Hide it in smiles and affability:

For if thou put thy native semblance on,

Not Erebus itself were dim enough

To hide thee from prevention.

O dishonest wretch!

Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?

O England!—model to thy inward greatness,

Like little body with a mighty heart.

O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies

In the small orb of one particular tear!

O gentle Romeo,

If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully,

Or if thou think’st I am too quickly won,

I’ll frown and be perverse and say thee nay,

So thou wilt woo: but else, not for the world.

O God, Thy arm was here;

And not to us, but to Thy arm alone,

Ascribe we all!

O hateful Error, Melancholy’s child!

Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men

The things that are not? O Error, soon conceiv’d,

Thou never com’st unto a happy birth,

But kill’st the mother that engender’d thee.

O heavens! that one might read the book of fate,

And see the revolutions of the times

Make mountains level, and the continent,

(Weary of solid firmness,) melt itself

Into the sea.

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.

O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason!

O Lord, methought, what pain it was to drown,

What dreadful noise of water in mine ears!

What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!

Methought I saw a thousand fearful wracks;

A thousand men that fishes gnaw’d upon;

Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,

Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All scattered 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.

O monstrous arrogance, thou liest, thou thread,

Thou thimble,

Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail,

Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket, thou:—

Brav’d in mine own house with a skein of thread!

Away thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant;

Or I shall so be-mete thee with thy yard,

As thou shalt think on prating whilst thou liv’st!

O most delicate fiend!

Who is’t can read a woman?

O my good lord, that comfort comes too late;

’T is like a pardon after execution:

That gentle physic, given in time, had cur’d me,

But now I’m past all comfort here but prayers.

O my prophetic soul!

My uncle!

O noble fool!

A worthy fool! Motley’s the only wear.

O place and greatness! millions of false eyes

Are stuck upon thee; volumes of reports

Run with these false and most contrarious quests

Upon thy doings: thousand escapes of wit

Make thee the father of their idle dream,

And wrack thee in their fancies.

O polish’d perturbation! golden care!

That keep’st the ports of slumber open wide

To many a watchful night! sleep with it now!

Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet

As he whose brow with homely biggen bound

Snores out the watch of night.

O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her;

And be her sense but as a monument.

O that my tongue were in the thunder’s mouth!

Then with a passion would I shake the world.

O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce

’Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defiler

Of hymen’s purest bed! thou valiant Mars!

Thou ever young, fresh, lov’d, and delicate wooer,

Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snow

That lies on Dian’s lip! thou visible god,

That solder’st close impossibilities,

And mak’st them kiss! and speak’st with every tongue,

To every purpose!

O thou who dost inhabit in my breast,

Leave not the mansion so long tenantless;

Lest growing ruinous the building fall,

And leave no memory of what it was.

O villainy! Ho! let the door be lock’d;

Treachery! seek it out.

O war, thou son of hell,

Whom angry heav’ns do make their minister,

Throw in the frozen bosoms of our part

Hot coals of vengeance!—Let no soldier fly;

He that is truly dedicate to war

Hath no self-love: nor he that loves himself.

O what a world of vile ill-favour’d faults

Looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!

O, ’tis the cunning livery of hell,

The damned’st body to invest and cover

In princely guards.

O, answer me:

Let me not burst in ignorance! but tell,

Why thy canoniz’d bones, hearsed in death,

Have burst their cerements! why the sepulchre,

Wherein we saw thee quietly in-urn’d,

Hath op’d his ponderous and marble jaws,

To cast thee up again?

O, he sits high in all the people’s hearts:

And that, which would appear offence in us,

His countenance, like richest alchymy,

Will change to virtue and to worthiness.

O, he’s a limb, that has but a disease;

Mortal, to cut it off; to cure it, easy.

O, he’s as tedious

As is a tired horse, a railing wife;

Worse than a smoky house; I had rather live

With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far,

Than feed on cates, and have him talk to me,

In any summer-house in Christendom.

O, heavens! can you hear a good man groan,

And not relent, or not compassion him?

O, how much more doth Beauty beauteous seem,

By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!

The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem,

For that sweet odor which doth in it live.

O, how ripe in show

Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow.

O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out

Against the wreckful siege of battering days,

When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?

O fearful meditation! where, alack,

Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

O, how wretched

Is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favors!

There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,

That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,

More pangs and fears than wars and women have;

And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,

Never to hope again.

O, I cry your mercy;

There is my purse, to cure that blow of thine.

O, I have lost my reputation!

I have lost the immortal part of myself

And what remains is bestial.

O, I have suffer’d

With those that I saw suffer! a brave vessel,

Who had no doubt some noble creature in her,

Dash’d all to pieces. O, the cry did knock

Against my very heart! poor souls! they perish’d.

O, it is excellent

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

To use it like a giant.

O, mischief! thou art swift

To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!

O, my Antonio, I do know of these,

That therefore only are reputed wise,

For saying nothing.

O, she is fallen

Into a pit of ink, that the wide sea

Hath drops too few to wash her clean again.

O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,

That monthly changes in her circled orb,

Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

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.

O, that a mighty man of such descent,

Of such possessions, and so high esteem,

Should be infused with so foul a spirit!

O, that estates, degrees, and offices,

Were not deriv’d corruptly! and that dear honour

Were purchas’d by the merit of the wearer!

How many then should cover, that stand bare?

How many be commanded, that command?

How much low peasantry would then be glean’d

From the true seed of honour? and how much honour

Pick’d from the chaff and ruin of the times,

To be new varnish’d?

O, that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might touch that cheek!

O, that the slave had forty thousand lives;

One is too poor, too weak for my revenge.

O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.

She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone

On the forefinger of an alderman.

O, what a mansion have those vices got

Which for their habitation chose out thee,

Where beauty’s veil doth cover every blot,

And all things turn to fair that eyes can see!

O, what a world is this, when what is comely,

Envenoms him that bears it!

O, what authority and show of truth

Can cunning sin cover itself withal!

O, what may man within him hide,

Though angel on the outward side.

O! he’s as tedious

As is a tired horse, a railing wife;

Worse than a smoky house;—I had rather live

With cheese and garlic, in a windmill, far,

Than feed on cates, and have him talk to me

In any summer house in Christendom.

Oft Expectation fails, and most oft there

Where most it promises.

Oft have I heard that grief softens the mind

And makes it fearful and degenerate.

Oftentimes, excusing of a fault

Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse;

As patches, set upon a little breach,

Discredit more in hiding of the fault,

Than did the fault before it was so patched.

Oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

The instruments of darkness tell us truths;

Win us with honest trifles, to betray us

In deepest consequence.

Oh, break, my heart! poor bankrupt, break at once!

To prison, eyes, ne’er look on liberty!

Vile earth, to earth resign; end motion here;

And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier!

Oh, how this spring of life resembleth

The uncertain glory of an April day,

Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,

And, by and by, a cloud takes all away!

Oh! I have past a miserable night!

So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,

That as I am a Christian faithful man,

I would not spend another such a night,

Though ’t were to buy a world of happy days!

On your eyelids crown the god of sleep,

Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness,

Making such difference ’twixt wake and sleep

As is the difference betwixt day and night

The hour before the heavenly-harness’d team

Begins his golden progress in the east.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

Or close the wall up with our English dead.

One doth not know

How much an ill word may empoison liking.

One sorrow never comes but brings an heir,

That may succeed as his inheritor.

One woe doth tread upon another’s heel,

So fast they follow.

One, whose subdu’d eyes,

Albeit unused to the melting mood,

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees

Their medicinal gum.

Open thy gate of mercy, gracious God!

My soul flies through these wounds to seek out thee.

Or as one nail by strength drives out another,

So the remembrance of my former love

Is by a newer object quite forgotten.

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush suppos’d a bear!

Or, having sworn too hard a keeping oath,

Study to break it and not break my troth.

Ornament is but the gilded shore

To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf

Veiling an Indian; beauty, in a word,

The seeming truth which cunning times put on

To entrap the wisest.

Orpheus’ lute was strung with poets’ sinews;

Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones;

Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans

Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.

Our battle is more full of names than yours,

Our men more perfect in the use of arms,

Our armor all as strong, our cause the best;

Then reason will our hearts should be as good.

Our courteous Antony,

*****

Being barber’d ten times o’er, goes to the feast.

Our doubts are traitors

And make us lose the good we oft might win,

By fearing to attempt.

Our poesy is as a Gum, which oozes

From whence ’tis nourish’d; The fire i’ the flint

Shows not till it be struck; our gentle Flame

Provokes itself, and, like the current, flies

Each bound it chafes.

Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor:

For ’tis the mind that makes the body rich;

And as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds,

So honor peereth in the meanest habit.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,

Which we ascribe to Heav’n. The fated sky

Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull

Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.

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.

Our wills and fates do so contrary run

That our devices still are overthrown;

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

Pacing through the forest,

Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy.

Perseverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honour bright: to have done is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery.

Pleasure and revenge

Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice

Of any true decision.

Poise the cause in justice’s equal scales,

Whose beam stands sure, whose rightful cause prevails.

Poison be their drink!

Gall, worse than gall, the daintiest meat that they taste!—

Their softest touch as smart as lizards’ stings!

Their music frightful as the serpent’s hiss!

And boding screech-owls make the concert full!

Poor naked wretches, wheresoever 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? Oh, I have ta’en

Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel;

That thou may’st shake the superflux to them,

And show the heavens more just.

Poor wretches, that depend

On greatness’ favor, dream as I have done;

Wake, and find nothing. But, alas, I swerve.

Many dream not to find, neither deserve,

And yet are steep’d in favors.

Portia, adieu! I have too griev’d a heart

To take a tedious leave.

Praising what is lost,

Makes the remembrance dear.

Press not a falling man too far; ’tis virtue:

His faults lie open to the laws; let them,

Not you, correct him.

Presume not that I am the thing I was:

For heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive,

That I have turned away my former self;

So will I those that kept me company.

Princes have but their titles for their glories,

An outward honor for an inward toil;

And, for unfelt imaginations,

They often feel a world of restless cares.

Put in their hands thy bruising irons of wrath,

That they may crush down with heavy fall

The usurping helmets of our adversaries.

Put on

The dauntless spirit of resolution.

Rather let my head

Stoop to the block than these knees bow to any

Save to the God of heaven and to my king.

Read o’er the volume of young Paris’ face,

And find delight writ there with beauty’s pen;

Examine every several lineament,

*****

And what obscur’d in this fair volume lies,

Find written in the margin of his eyes.

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 skiey influences,)

That dost this habitation, where thou keep’st,

Hourly afflict.

Remember thee!

Yea, from the table of my memory

I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records.

Report me and my cause aright

To the unsatisfied.

Riveted,

Screwed to my memory.

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 doth pierce it.

Rude am I in my speech,

And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace;

For since these arms of mine had seven years’ pith,

Till now some nine moons wasted, they have us’d

Their dearest action in the tented field,

And little of this great world can I speak,

More than pertains to feats of broil and battle,

And therefore little shall I grace my cause

In speaking for myself.

Rudeness is a sauce to his good wit,

Which gives men stomach to digest his words,

With better appetite.

Rumour doth double, like the voice and echo,

The numbers of the fear’d.

Saint Valentine is past;

Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?

Say she be mute and will not speak a word;

Then I’ll commend her volubility,

And say she uttereth piercing eloquence.

Say that she rail, why then I’ll tell her plain

She sings as sweetly as a nightingale;

Say that she frown; I’ll say she looks as clear

As morning roses newly wash’d with dew;

Say she be mute and will not speak a word;

Then I’ll commend her volubility,

And say she uttereth piercing eloquence.

Say that upon the altar of her beauty

You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart:

Write till your ink be dry and with your tears

Moist it again, and frame some feeling line,

That may discover such integrity.

Schoolmasters will I keep within my house,

Fit to instruct her youth.***

***To cunning men

I will be very kind, and liberal

To mine own children in good bringing up.

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.

See where she comes, apparell’d like the spring;

Graces her subjects.

See, see what showers arise,

Blown with the windy tempest of my heart.

See, what a ready tongue suspicion hath!

He that but fears the thing he would not know,

Hath, by instinct, knowledge from others’ eyes,

That what he feared is chanced.

See, your guests approach:

Address yourself to entertain them sprightly,

And let’s be red with mirth.

Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort

As if he mock’d himself, and scorn’d his spirit

That could be mov’d to smile at anything.

Set honor in one eye, and death i’ the other,

And I will look on both indifferently:

For, let the gods so speed me as I love

The name of honor more than I fear death.

Shadows tonight

Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard

Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers

Armed in proof, and led by shallow Richmond.

Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit,

And look on death itself!

Shall remain!

Hear you this Triton of the minnows? mark you

His absolute “shall”?

Shall we go throw away our coats of steel,

And wrap our bodies in black mourning gowns,

Numb’ring our Ave Marias with our beads?

Or shall we on the helmets of our foes

Tell our devotion with revengeful arms.

Shall we upon the footing of our land

Send fair-play orders, and make compromise,

Insinuation, parley, and base truce,

To arms invasive?

She bids you

Upon the wanton rushes lay you down,

And rest your gentle head upon her lap,

And she will sing the song that pleaseth you,

And on your eyelids crown the god of sleep,

Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness,

Making such difference ’twixt wake and sleep

As is the difference ’twixt day and night.

She came adorned hither like sweet May.

She had a good opinion of advice,

Like all who give and eke receive it gratis,

For which small thanks are still the market price,

Even when the article at highest rate is.

She hath prosperous art

When she will play with reason and discourse,

And well she can persuade.

She hath tied

Sharp-tooth’d inkindness, like a vulture here.

She in beauty, education, blood,

Holds hand with any princess of the world.

She is a woman, therefore may be woo’d;

She is a woman, therefore may be won.

She is mine own,

And I as rich in having such a jewel

As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,

The water nectar and the rocks pure gold.

She is peevish, sullen, froward,

Proud, disobedient, stubborn, lacking duty;

Neither regarding that she is my child,

Nor fearing me as if I were her father.

She never told her love,

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

Feed on her damask cheek; she pined in thought,

And, with a green and yellow melancholy,

She sat, like patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

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.

She shall watch all night:

And if she chance to nod I’ll rail and brawl

And with the clamour keep her still awake.

This is the way to kill a wife with kindness.

She wish’d she had not heard it, yet she wish’d

That heaven had made her such a man: She thank’d me,

And bade me, if I had a friend that lov’d her,

I should but teach him how to tell my story

And that would woo her.

She’s not well married, that lives married long;

But she’s best married, that dies married young.

Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,

That I may see my shadow as I pass.

Shortly his fortune shall be lifted higher;

True industry doth kindle honour’s fire.

Show you sweet Cæsar’s wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths,

And bid them speak for me.

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,

Men were deceivers ever,

One foot in sea and one on shore;

To one thing constant never.

Silence is only commendable

In a neat’s tongue dried, and a maid not vendible.

Silence often of pure innocence

Persuades, when speaking fails.

Since brevity is the soul of wit,

And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,

I will be brief.

Since every Jack became a gentleman,

There’s many a gentle person made a Jack.

Since you will buckle fortune on thy back,

To bear her burden whe’r I will or no,

I must have patience to endure the load.

Sir, you are very welcome to our house:

It must appear in other ways than words,

Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy.

Slander,

Whose edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue

Out-venoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath

Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie

All corners of the world: kings, queens, and states,

Maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave

This viperous slander enters.

Slander’d to death by villains,

That dare as well answer a man indeed

As I dare take a serpent by the tongue:

Boys, apes, braggarts, Jacks, milksops!

Slander’s mark was ever yet the fair;

The ornament of beauty is suspect,

A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air,

So thou be good, slander doth but approve

Thy worth the greater.

Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast!

Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest.

Sleep shall neither night nor day

Hang upon his pent-house lid.

Smooth runs the water, where the brook is deep;

And in his simple show he harbors treason.

The fox barks not, when he would steal the lamb.

So full of shapes is fancy,

That it alone is high fantastical.

So Judas kiss’d his Master,

And cried—All hail! when as he meant—all harm.

So many hours must I take my rest;

So many hours must I contemplate.

So many miseries have craz’d my voice,

That my woe-wearied tongue is still and mute.

So smile the Heavens upon this holy act

That after hours with sorrow chide us not!

So study evermore is overshot;

While it doth study to have what it would

It doth forget to do the thing it should,

And when it hath the thing it hunteth most,

’Tis won as towns with fire, so won, so lost.

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.

So they

Doubly redoubled strokes.

So we grew together,

Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,

But yet a 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.

So weary with disasters tugg’d with fortune,

That I would set my life on any chance,

To mend, or be rid on ’t.

So work the honey-bees;

Creatures, that by a rule in nature teach

The art 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-ey’d justice, with his surly hum,

Delivering o’er to executors pale

The lazy yawning drone.

Some Grief shows much of Love;

But much of Grief shows still some want of Wit.

Some guard these traitors to the block of death;

Treason’s true bed and yielder up of breath.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall;

Some run from breaks of ice, and answer none:

And some condemned for a fault alone.

Some say, that ever ’gainst that season comes,

Wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,

The bird of dawning singeth all night long,

And then, they say no spirit can walk abroad,

So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

Some there be that shadows kiss;

Such have but a shadow’s bliss.

Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish;

A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,

A tower’d citadel, a pendant rock,

A forked mountain, or blue promontory

With trees upon ’t, that nod unto the world,

And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen these signs;

They are black vesper’s pageants.

Sometimes she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,

And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,

Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,

Of healths five fathoms deep; and then anon

Drums in his ear, at which he starts, and wakes,

And, being thus frighted, swears, a prayer or two,

And sleeps again.

Sometimes we are devils to ourselves,

When we will tempt the frailty of our powers,

Presuming on their changeful potency.

Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish;

A vapour, sometimes, like a bear or lion,

A tower’d citadel, a pendant rock,

A forked mountain, or blue promontory,

With trees upon’t, that nod unto the world,

And mock our eyes with air.

Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours,—

Makes the night morning, and the noontide night.

Sorrow conceal’d, like an oven stopp’d,

Doth burn the heart to cinders.

Sound trumpets! let our bloody colors wave!

And either victory, or else a grave.

Speak no more:

Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul;

And there I see such black and grained spots

As will not leave their tinct.

Spirits are not finely touched

But to fine issues.

Spirits of peace, where are ye? are ye all gone?

And leave me here in wretchedness behind ye?

Stand not upon the order of your going,

But go at once.

Stealing her soul with many vows of faith;

And ne’er a true one.

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,

To silence envious tongues. Be just and fear not:

Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s,

Thy God’s, and truth’s.

Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun,

That will not be deep-search’d with saucy looks,

Small have continual plodders ever won,

Save base authority from others’ books.

Such a house broke!

So noble a master fallen! All gone and not

One friend to take his fortune by the arm

And go along with him.

Such duty as the subject owes the prince,

Even such a woman oweth to her husband;

And, when she’s froward, peevish, sullen, sour,

And not obedient to his honest will,

What is she, but a foul contending rebel,

And graceless traitor to her loving lord?

Superfluous branches

We lop away, that bearing boughs may live.

Sure, He that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and god-like reason

To fust in us unus’d.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;

The thief doth fear each bush an officer.

Sweet are the uses of adversity;

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

Sweet fellowship in shame!

One drunkard loves another of the name.

Sweet, good night!

This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath,

May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

Sweets to the sweet; farewell.

Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;

Brief as the lightning in the collied night,

That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,

And ere a man hath power to say “Behold!”

The jaws of darkness do devour it up.

Take no repulse, whatever she doth say;

For, “get you gone,” she doth not mean, “away.”

Flatter and praise, commend, extol their graces;

Though ne’er so black, say they have angels’ faces.

That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man,

If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.

Take, O take those lips away,

That so sweetly were foresworn;

And those eyes, the break of day,

Lights that do mislead the morn;

But my kisses bring again,

Seals of love, but sealed in vain.

Tell me where is fancy bred,

Or in the heart, or in the head?

How begot, how nourished?

Tell me, he that knows,

*****

Why such daily cast of brazen cannon,

And foreign mart for implements of war:

Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task

Does not divide the Sunday from the week:

What might be toward, that this sweaty haste

Doth make the night joint-laborer with the day;

Who is’t that can inform me?

Tellest thou me of “ifs”? Thou art a traitor:

Off with his head!

Thanks to men

Of noble minds, is honorable meed.

That book in many’s eyes doth share the glory,

That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.

That he is mad, ’tis true; ’tis true, ’tis pity;

And pity ’tis ’tis true.

That in the captain’s but a choleric word,

Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

That instant shut

My woeful self up in a mourning house,

Raining the tears of lamentation.

That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man,

If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.

That what he will he does, and does so much

That proof is call’d impossibility.

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

While it was ours.

That, sir, which serves and seeks for gain,

And follows but for form,

Will pack, when it begins to rain,

And leave thee in a storm.

The adage must be verified—

That beggars mounted, run their horse to death.

The armorers, accomplishing the knights,

With busy hammers closing rivets up,

Give dreadful note of preparation.

The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d thorne,

Burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten gold;

Purple the sails, and so perfumed that

The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were silver,

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made

The water which they beat to follow faster,

As amorous of their strokes.

The bay-trees in our country all are wither’d

And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;

The pale-fac’d moon looks bloody on the earth

And lean-look’d prophets whisper fearful change;

Rich men look sad and ruffians dance and leap,

The one in fear to lose what they enjoy,

The other to enjoy by rage and war.

The big round tears

Cours’d one another down his innocent nose

In piteous chase.

The breach of custom

Is breach of all.

The cannons have their bowels full of wrath,

And ready mounted are they to spit forth

Their iron indignation ’gainst your walls.

The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth,

“Now the king drinks to Hamlet.”

The caterpillars of the commonwealth,

Which I have sworn to weed and pluck away.

The chariest maid is prodigal enough

If she unveil her beauty to the moon:

Virtue itself scapes not calumnious strokes:

The canker galls the infants of the Spring,

Too oft before their buttons be disclosed;

And in the morn and liquid dew of Youth,

Contagious blastments are most imminent.

Be wary then: best safety lies in fear.

The cheek

Is apter than the tongue to tell an errand.

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind.

The color of the king doth come and go,

Between his purpose and his conscience,

Like heralds ’twixt two dreadful battles set:

His passion is so ripe, it needs must break.

The day begins to break, and night is fled,

Whose pitchy mantle over-veil’d the earth.

The deep of night is crept upon our talk,

And Nature must obey necessity.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

An evil soul, producing holy witness,

Is like a villain with a smiling cheek;

A goodly apple rotten at the heart;

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

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.

The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,

And these are of them.

The eastern gate, all fiery red,

Opening on Neptune, with fair blessed beams,

Turns into yellow gold his salt-green streams.

The end crowns all;

And that old common arbitrator, time,

Will one day end it.

The error of our eye directs our mind:

What error leads must err.

The eye sees not itself

But by reflection, by some other things.

The fire i’ the flint

Shows not till it be struck.

The fire-eyed maid of smoky war

All hot and bleeding will we offer them.

The flesh being proud, Desire doth fight with Grace,

For there it revels, and when that decays,

The guilty Rebel for remission prays.

The flighty purpose never is o’ertook,

Unless the deed go with it.

The fool hath planted in his memory

An army of good words; and I do know

A many fools that stand in better place,

Garnish’d like him, that for a tricksy word

Defy the matter.

The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

The observed of all observers.

The glorious sun

Stays in his course and plays the alchemist,

Turning with splendor of his precious eye

The meager cloddy earth to glittering gold.

The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds

Were strangely clamorous, to the frighted fields.

The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows;

They are polluted offerings, more abhorr’d

Than spotted livers in the sacrifice.

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices

Make instruments to plague us.

The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night,

Checkering the eastern clouds with streaks of light;

And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels

From forth day’s path, and Titan’s fiery wheels.

The heart hath treble wrong

When it is barr’d the aidance of the tongue.

The hearts

Of all his people shall revolt from him,

And kiss the lips of unacquainted change.

The heavenly-harness’d team

Begins his golden progress in the east.

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre

Observe degree, priority, and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,

Office, and custom, in all line of order.

The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,

That it had it head bit off by it young.

The hour before the heavenly-harness’d team

Begins his golden progress in the east.

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve;

Lovers, to bed; ’tis almost fairy time.

The jury, passing on the prisoner’s life,

May, in the sworn twelve, have a thief or two

Guiltier than him they try.

The king-becoming graces,

As justice, verity, temperance, stableness,

Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness,

Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude,

I have no relish of them; but abound

In the division of each several crime,

Acting in many ways.

The king’s name is a tower of strength,

Which they upon the adverse party want.

The ladies call him sweet;

The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet.

The latter end of a fray, and the beginning of a feast,

Fits a dull fighter, and a keen guest.

The liquid drops of tears that you have shed

Shall come again, transform’d to orient pearl,

Advantaging their loan with interest

Of ten times double gain of happiness.

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 man that once did sell the lion’s skin

While the beast lived, was killed with hunting him.

The mightier man, the mightier is the thing

That makes him honor’d, or begets him Hate:

For greatest Scandal waits on greatest state.

The Moon, being clouded presently is miss’d,

But little Stars may hide them when they list.

The crow may clothe his coal-black wings in mire,

And unperceived fly with the filth away;

But if the like the snow-white swan desire,

The stain upon his silver down will stay.

Poor grooms are sightless night, Kings glorious day.

Gnats are unnoted whereso’er they fly,

But eagles gazed upon with every eye.

The mind I sway by, and the heart I bear,

Shall never sagg with doubt, nor shake with fear.

The miserable have no other medicine,

But only hope.

The morning steals upon the night,

Melting the darkness.

The multiplying villainies of nature

Do swarm upon him.

The native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;

And enterprises of great pith and moment,

With this regard, their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

The night of sorrow now is turn’d to day,

Her two blue windows faintly she upheaveth,

Like the fair sun, when in his fresh array

He cheers the morn, and all the world relieveth;

And as the bright sun glorifies the sky,

So is her face illumined with her eye.

The nimble gunner

With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,

And down goes all before them.

The play’s the thing

Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

The presence of a king engenders love

Amongst his subjects, and his royal friends.

The private wound is deepest: O time most accurs’d

’Mongst all foes that a friend should be the worst.

The purest treasure mortal times afford,

Is spotless reputation; that away,

Men are but gilded loam, or painted clay.

The quality of mercy is not strain’d;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;

It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes;

’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown.

The robb’d that smiles steals something from the thief;

He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.

The sands are number’d, that make up my life;

Here must I stay, and here my life must end.

The selfsame sun that shines upon his court

Hides not his visage from our cottage, but

Looks on alike.

The sepulchre,

Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d,

Hath op’d his ponderous and marble jaws.

The setting sun, and music at the close,

As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last.

The silence often of pure innocence

Persuades, when speaking fails.

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.

The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,

And doves will peck in safeguard of their brood.

The southern wind

Doth play the trumpet to his purposes,

And, by his hollow whistling in the leaves,

Foretells a tempest and a blustering day.

The spirit of a youth

That means to be of note, begins betimes.

The strawberry grows underneath the nettle

And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best

Neighbour’d by fruit of baser quality.

The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,

Though to itself it only live and die,

But if that flower with base infection meet,

The basest weed outbraves his dignity;

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

The sweat of industry would dry, and die,

But for the end it works to.

The sweet sound,

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odor!

The sweets we wish for, turn to loathed sours,

Even in the moment that we call them ours.

The thunder,

That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc’d

The name of Prosper; it did bass my trespass.

The tide is now: nay, not thy tide of tears,

That tide will stay me longer than I should.

The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen

As is the razor’s edge invisible,

Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen

Above the sense of sense; so sensible

Seemeth their conference; their conceits have wings

Fleeter than arrow, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things.

The torrent roar’d; and we did buffet it

With lusty sinews; throwing it aside,

And stemming it with hearts of controversy.

The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness,

And time to speak it in; you rub the sore,

When you should bring the plaster.

The tyrant custom, most grave senators,

Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war

My thrice-driven bed of down.

The venom clamours of a jealous woman

Poison more deadly than a mad-dog’s tooth.

The weary sun hath made a golden set,

And, by the bright track of his fiery car,

Gives signal of a goodly day to-morrow.

The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day:

Now spurs the lated traveller apace,

To gain the timely inn.

The world is grown so bad,

That wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.

The world is still deceiv’d with ornament,

In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt,

But, being season’d with a gracious voice,

Obscures the show of evil? 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 wound of peace is surety,

Surety secure; but modest doubt is called

The beacon of the wise, the ’tent that searches

To the bottom of the worst.

The year growing ancient,

Nor yet on summer’s death, nor on the birth

Of trembling winter.

Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,

Which in their summer beauty kiss’d each other.

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.

Then fresh tears

Stood on her cheeks, as doth the honeydew

Upon a gather’d lily almost wither’d.

Then know, that I have little wealth to lose;

A man I am cross’d with adversity.

Then shall our names

Familiar in his mouth as household words,

*****

Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.

Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school.

Then with the losers let it sympathize;

For nothing can seem foul to those that win.

Then, as I said, the duke, great Bolingbroke,

Mounted upon a hot and fiery steed,

Which his aspiring rider seem’d to know,

With slow but stately pace kept on his course;

While all tongues cry’d, God save thee, Bolingbroke,

You would have thought the very windows spake

So many greedy looks of young and old

Through casements darted their desiring eyes

Upon his visage.

Then, Bolingbroke, as low as to thy heart,

Through the false passage of thy throat, thou liest.

There are a kind of men so loose of soul,

That in their sleeps will mutter their affairs.

There are a sort of men, whose visages

Do cream and mantle, like a standing pond;

And do a willful stillness entertain,

With purpose to be dressed in an opinion

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;

As who should say, I am sir Oracle,

And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!

There grows

In my most ill-compos’d affection such

A stanchless avarice, that, were I king,

I should cut off the nobles for their lands.

There is a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.

There is a history in all men’s lives,

Figuring the nature of the times deceas’d,

The which observed, a man may prophesy

With a near aim, of the main chance of things

As yet not come to life, which in their seeds

And weak beginnings lie intreasured.

There is a kind of character in thy life,

That to the observer doth thy history

Fully unfold.

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;

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.

There is no creature loves me;

And if I die no soul shall pity me.

There is no vice so simple, but assumes

Some mark of virtue on its outward parts.

There is not such a word

Spoke of in Scotland, as this term of fear.

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.

I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none.

There she shook

The holy water from her heavenly eyes,

And clamour moisten’d.

There’s a Divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them as we will.

There’s a 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.

There’s husbandry in heaven;

Their candles are all out.

There’s in him stuff that puts him to these ends;

For being not propped up by ancestry whose grace

Chalks successors their way; nor called upon

For high feats done to the crown; neither allied

To eminent assistants; but, spider-like,

Out of his self-drawing web, he gives us note;

The force of his own merit makes his way;

A gift that heaven gives for him, which buys

A place next to a king.

There’s no art

To find the mind’s construction in the face.

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.

There’s such divinity doth hedge a king,

That treason can but peep to what it would.

These earthly god-fathers 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.

These high wild hills and rough uneven ways,

Draw out our miles and make them wearisome;

And yet your fair discourse hath been as sugar,

Making the hard way sweet and delectable.

These should be hours for necessities,

Not for delights; times to repair our nature

With comforting repose, and not for us

To waste these times.

These violent delights have violent ends

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,

Which as they kiss consume.

They are as gentle

As zephyrs blowing below the violet.

They bore him barefac’d on the bier;

*****

And in his grave rain’d many a tear.

They more or less came in with cap and knee,

Met him in boroughs, cities, villages;

Attended him on bridges, stood on lanes,

Laid gifts before him, proffer’d him their oaths,

Gave him their heirs: as pages follow’d him,

Even at his heels, in golden multitudes.

They say, best men are moulded out of faults,

And, for the most, become much more the better,

For being a little bad.

They say, the tongues of dying men

Enforce attention, like deep harmony;

Where words are scarce, they’re seldom spent in vain;

For they breathe truth, that breathe their words in pain.

They spake not a word;

But like dumb statues or breathless stones,

Star’d on each other, and look’d deadly pale.

They that stand high, have many blasts to shake them;

And if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces.

They threw their caps

As they would hang them on the horns o’ the moon,

Shouting their emulation.

Thieves for their robbery have authority

When judges steal themselves.

Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward

To what they were before.

Things done well,

And with a care, exempt themselves from fear;

Things done without example, in their issue

Are to be feared.

Things without remedy,

Should be without regard: what’s done is done.

Think you, a little din can daunt mine ears?

Have I not in my time heard lions roar?

Have I not heard the sea, puff’d up with winds,

Rage like an angry boar, chafed with sweat

Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,

And heaven’s artillery thunder in the skies?

Have I not in a pitched battle heard

Loud ’larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets’ clang

And do you tell me of a woman’s tongue?

This act is an ancient tale new told;

And, in the last repeating, troublesome,

Being urged at a time unseasonable.

This day hath made

Much work for tears in many a English mother,

Whose sons lie scatter’d on the bleeding ground;

Many a widow’s husband grovelling lies,

Coldly embracing the discolor’d earth.

This England never did, nor never shall,

Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror.

This fellow pecks up wit, as pigeons peace,

And utters it again when Jove doth please;

He is wit’s peddler.

This is all as true as it is strange;

Nay, it is ten times true; for truth is truth

To th’ end of reckoning.

This is he

That kiss’d away his hand in courtesy;

This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice,

That when he plays at tables, chides the dice

In honorable terms; nay, he can sing

A mean most meanly; and in ushering,

Mend him who can; the ladies call him, sweet;

The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet.

This is some fellow,

Who having been prais’d for bluntness, doth affect

A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb,

Quite from his nature: he can’t flatter, he!

An honest mind and plain,—he must speak truth!

And they will take it so; if not he’s plain.

These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness

Harbor more craft, and far corrupter ends,

Than twenty silly, ducking observants,

That stretch their duty nicely.

This is the fairy land; O spite of spites,

We talk with goblins, owls, and elvish sprites.

This is the state of man: To-day he puts forth

The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms,

And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,

And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely

His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root

And then he falls, as I do.

This is the very coinage of your brain;

This bodiless creation ecstasy.

This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,

Dear for her reputation through the 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 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.

This senior junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid:

Regent of love rhymes, lord of folded arms,

The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,

Liege of all loiterers and malcontents.

This sickness doth infect

The very life-blood of our enterprise.

This sorrow’s heavenly;

It strikes where it doth love.

This the soldier’s life,

To have their balmy slumbers wak’d with strife.

This token serveth for a flag of truce

Betwixt ourselves and all our followers.

This world is not for aye, nor ’tis not strange

That even our loves should with our fortunes change.

This yellow slave

Will knit and break religions; bless the accurs’d;

Make the hoar leprosy ador’d; place thieves,

And give them title, knee, and approbation,

With senators on the bench.

Those eyes of thine from mine have drawn salt tears:

Sham’d their aspects with store of childish drops.

Those linen cheeks of thine

Are counsellors to fear.

Those old fellows have

Their ingratitude in them hereditary;

Their blood is caked, ’tis cold, it seldom flows;

’Tis lack of kindly warmth, they are not kind,

And nature, as it grows toward earth,

Is fashion’d for the journey—dull and heavy.

Those that do teach young babes

Do it with gentle means and easy tasks.

Those that much covet are with gain so fond,

That what they have not, that which they possess,

They scatter and unloose it from their bond,

And so, by hoping more, they have but less.

Thou art a slave, whom fortune’s tender arm

With favour never clasp’d; but bred a dog.

Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound

Upon a wheel of fire; that mine own tears

Do scald like molten lead.

Thou art a traitor, and a miscreant;

Too good to be so, and too bad to live.

Thou canst not say, I did it: never shake

Thy gory locks at me.

Thou hast a grim appearance, and thy face

Bears a command in it; tho’ thy tackle’s torn,

Thou showest a noble vessel.

Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung

With feigning voice verses of feigning love.

Thou hast given me, in this beauteous face,

A world or earthly blessings to my soul,

If sympathy of love unite our thoughts.

Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar,

And the creature run from the cur: There,

There, thou might’st behold the great image of authority;

A dog’s obeyed in office.

Thou hast stolen both mine office and my name;

The one ne’er got me credit, the other mickle blame.

Thou lead them thus,

Till o’er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep

With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep.

Thou seest, we are not all alone unhappy:

This wide and universal theatre

Presents more woeful pageants than the scene

Wherein we play in.

Thou shalt be punish’d for thus frighting me.

For I am sick and capable of fears;

Oppress’d with wrongs, and therefore full of fears;

A widow, husbandless, subject to fears;

A woman, naturally born to fears;

And though thou now confess, thou did’st but jest,

With my vex’d spirits I cannot take a truce,

But they will quake and tremble all this day.

Thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward!

Thou little valiant, great in villainy!

Thou ever strong upon the stronger side!

Thou Fortune’s champion, that dost never fight

But when her humorous ladyship is by

To teach thee safety.

Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

The very stones prate of my whereabout.

Thou thought’st to help me; and such thanks I give

As one near death to those that wish him live.

Thou villain base,

Know’st me not by my clothes?

No, nor thy tailor, rascal,

Who is thy grandfather; he made those clothes,

Which, as it seems, make thee.

Thou wear a lion’s hide! doff it for shame,

And hang a calf-skin on those recreant limbs!

Though Fortune’s malice overthrow my state,

My mind exceeds the compass of her wheel.

Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty;

For in my youth I never did apply

Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood;

Nor did not with unbashful forehead woo

The means of weakness and debility:

Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,

Frosty, but kindly.

Though it be honest, it is never good

To bring bad news; give to a gracious message

An host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell

Themselves when they be felt.

Though now this grained face of mine be hid

In sap-consuming winter’s drizzled snow,

And all the conduits of my blood froze up,

Yet hath my night of life some memory.

Though some of you with Pilate wash your hands

Showing an outward pity; yet you Pilates

Have here deliver’d me to my sour cross,

And water cannot wash away your sin.

Thrice is he arm’d that hath his quarrel just,

And he but naked, though lock’d up in steel,

Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.

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 doth pierce it.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.

Thus far into the bowels of the land

Have we march’d on without impediment.

Thus far our fortune keeps upward course,

And we are grac’d with wreaths of victory.

Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,

In sleep a king, but waking, no such matter.

Thus ready for the way of life or death,

I wait the sharpest blow.

Thy gown? why, ay,—come, tailor, let us see’t.

O mercy, God! what masquing stuff is here?

What’s this? a sleeve; ’tis like a demi-cannon:

What, up and down, carv’d like an apple-tart?

Here’s snip and nip and cut and slish and slash.

Like to a censer in a barber’s shop;

Why, what i’ devil’s name, tailor, call’st thou this!

Thy heart is big; get thee apart and weep.

Passion, I see, is catching; for mine eyes,

Seeing those beads of sorrow stand in thine,

Begin to water.

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,

Thy head, thy sovereign: one that cares for thee,

And for thy maintenance: commits his body

To painful labor, both by sea and land;

To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,

While thou liest warm at home, secure and safe,

And craves no other tribute at thy hands,

But love, fair looks, and true obedience;

Too little payment for so great a debt.

Thy soul’s flight,

If it find heaven, must find it out to-night.

Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war,

And thus hath so bestirr’d thee in thy sleep

That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow

Like bubbles in a fate-disturbed stream:

And in thy face strange motions have appear’d,

Such as we see when men restrain their breath

On some great sudden haste.

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes;

Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour’d

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done.

Time is like a fashionable host,

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand;

And with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly,

Grasps in the comer: Welcome ever smiles,

And farewell goes out sighing.

Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides;

Who covers faults, at last shame them derides.

Time, that takes survey of all the world,

Must have a stop.

Time’s glory is to calm contending kings,

To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light,

To stamp the seal of time in aged things,

To wake the morn and sentinel the night,

To wrong the wronger till he render right,

To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,

And smear with dust their glittering golden towers.

’Tis a kind of good deed to say well,

And yet words are no deeds.

’Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white

Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on.

’Tis beauty, that doth oft make women proud;

*****

’Tis virtue, that doth make them most admired;

*****

’Tis government, that makes them seem divine.

’Tis better to be lowly born,

And range with humble livers in content,

Than to be perk’d up in a glistering grief,

And wear a golden sorrow.

’Tis better using France than trusting France;

Let us be back’d with God, and with the seas,

Which He hath given for fence impregnable,

And with their helps only defend ourselves;

In them, and in ourselves, our safety lies.

’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.

’Tis but thy name that is my enemy,—

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.

What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,

Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part

Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose,

By any other name would smell as sweet.

’Tis death to me to be at enmity;

I hate it, and desire all good men’s love.

’Tis good for men to love their present pains

Upon example; so the spirit is eased.

’Tis in my memory lock’d,

And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

’Tis mad idolatry,

To make the service greater than the god.

’Tis much he dares;

And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,

He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour

To act in safety.

’Tis not enough to help the feeble up,

But to support him after.

’Tis not the many oaths that makes the truth,

But the plain single vow that is vow’d true.

’Tis now the very witching time of night

When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world.

’Tis often seen

Adoption strives with nature; and choice breeds

A native slip to us from foreign lands.

’Tis our fast intent

To shake all cares and business from our age,

Conferring them on younger strengths, while we

Unburden’d crawl toward death.

’Tis the curse of service;

Preferment goes by letter, and affection,

And not by old gradation, where each second

Stood heir to the first.

’Tis the sport to have the engineer

Hoist with his own petar.

’Tis too much prov’d—that, with devotion’s visage

And pious action, we do sugar o’er

The devil himself.

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

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? 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.

To bed, to bed; sleep kill those pretty eyes,

And give as soft attachment to thy senses,

As infants empty of all thought.

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.

To business that we love we rise betime,

And go to ’t with delight.

To climb steep hills

Requires slow pace at first.

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.

To doubt the Equivocation of the fiend,

That lies like truth: Fear not, till Birnam wood

Do come to Dunsinane.

To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength,

Gives in your weakness strength unto your foe.

To feed were best at home;

From thence the sauce to meat is ceremony;

Meeting were bare without it.

To fly the boar, before the boar pursues,

Were to incense the boar to follow us,

And make pursuit where he did mean no chase.

To glean the broken ears after the man

That the main harvest reaps.

To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil!

Conscience, and grace, to the profoundest pit!

I dare damnation: To this point I stand,—

That both the worlds I give to negligence,

Let come what comes; only I’ll be reveng’d.

To kill, I grant, is sin’s extremest gust;

But, in defence, by mercy, ’tis most just.

To mourn a mischief that is past and gone,

Is the next way to draw new mischief on.

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.

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.

To stand against the deep, dread-bolted thunder?

In the most terrible and nimble stroke

Of quick, cross lightning?

To thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

To vouch this is no proof

Without more certain and more overt tests

Than these thin habits and poor likelihoods

Of modern seeming do prefer against him.

To wail friends lost

Is not by much so wholesome—profitable,

As to rejoice at friends but newly found.

To weep, is to make less the depth of grief;

Tears, then, for babes; blows and revenge for me.

To wilful men,

The injuries that they themselves procure

Must be their school-masters.

To you your father should be as a god;

One that composed your beauties; yea, and one

To whom you are but as a form in wax,

By him imprinted, and within his power

To leave the figure, or disfigure it.

To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day,

All in the morning betime,

And I a maid at your window,

To be your Valentine.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time.

Tongues I’ll hang on every tree,

That shall civil sayings show.

Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be

Ere one can say “it lightens.”

Touch but my lips with those fair lips of thine,

(Though mine be not so fair, yet are they red)

The kiss shall be thine own as well as mine;—

What seest thou in the ground? hold up thy head;

Look in mine eyeballs; there thy beauty lies;

Then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes?

Treason is but trusted like the fox;

Who, ne’er so tame, so cherished, and lock’d up,

Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.

Trifles, light as air,

Are to the jealous confirmations strong

As proofs of Holy Writ.

True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings;

Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.

True, I talk of dreams,

Which are the children of an idle brain,

Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.

Trust me, sweet,

Out of this silence yet I pick’d a welcome.

Trust none,

For oaths are straws, men’s faiths are wafer cakes,

And hold-fast is the only dog.

Turn him to any cause of policy,

The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,

Familiar as his garter: that, when he speaks,

The air, a charter’d libertine, is still.

Tut! tut! my lord! we will not stand to prate;

Talkers are no good doers, be assured;

We go to use our hands, and not our tongues.

’Twas strange, ’twas passing strange;

’Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful.

Unbidden guests

Are often welcomest when they are gone.

Under the greenwood tree

Who loves to lie with me,

And tune his merry note

Unto the sweet bird’s throat,

Come hither, come hither, come hither;

No enemy here shall he see,

But winter and rough weather.

Under your good correction, I have seen,

When, after execution, judgment hath

Repented o’er his doom.

Universal plodding prisons up

The nimble spirits in the arteries;

As motion, and long-during action tires

The sinewy vigor of the traveller.

Unkindness may do much;

And his unkindness may defeat my life,

But never taint my love.

Unnatural deeds

Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds

To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets:

More needs she the divine than the physician.

Unpack my heart with words,

And fall a-cursing, like a very drab.

Villains, vipers, damn’d without redemption;

Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man;

Snakes in my heart-blood warm’d, that sting my heart;

Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas.

Violets dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,

Or Cytherea’s breath.

Virtue itself turns vice, being missapplied,

And vice sometime ’s by action dignified.

Virtue preserv’d from fell destruction’s blast,

Led on by heaven, and crown’d with joy at last.

Virtue, as it never will be moved,

Though Lewdness court it in a shape of Heav’n;

So Lust, though to a radiant angel link’d,

Will sate itself in a celestial bed,

And prey on garbage.

Was ever woman in this humour woo’d?

Was ever woman in this humour won?

We are gentlemen,

That neither in our hearts, nor outward eyes,

Envy the great, nor do the low despise.

We are not ourselves

When nature, being oppress’d, commands the mind

To suffer with the body.

We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

We cannot fight for love, as men may do;

We should be woo’d and were not made to woo.

We have scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it,

She’ll close, and be herself! whilst our poor malice

Remains in danger of her former tooth.

We must have bloody noses and crack’d crowns,

And pass them current too. God’s me, my horse!

We must not stint

Our necessary actions, in the fear

To cope malicious censurers; which ever,

As ravenous fishes, do a vessel follow

That is new trimm’d.

We often see, against some storm,

A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,

The bold winds speechless, and the orb below

As hush as death.

We, ignorant of ourselves,

Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers

Deny us for our good; so find we profit,

By losing of our prayers.

We’ll leave a proof, by that which we will do,

Wives may be merry, and yet honest too.

Wear this for me,—one out of suits with fortune,

That could give more, but that her hand lacks means.

Weariness

Can snore upon the flint, when resty sloth

Finds the down pillow hard.

Weep I cannot;

But my heart bleeds.

Welcome ever smiles,

And Farewell goes out sighing.

What a falling off was there.

What all so soon asleep; I wish mine eyes

Would with themselves shut up my thoughts.

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.

What art thou, thou idol ceremony?

What kind of god art thou, that suffer’st more

Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?

What art thou? Have not I

An arm as big as thine? A heart as big?

Thy words, I grant, are bigger, for I wear not

My dagger in my mouth.

What cracker is this same that deafs our ears

With this abundance of superfluous breath?

What fates impose, that men must needs abide;

It boots not to resist both wind and tide.

What hath this day deserv’d? what hath it done,

That it in golden letters should be set

Among the high tides in the calendar?

What have I done, that thou dar’st wag thy tongue

In noise so rude against me?

What have kings

That privates have not too, save ceremony?

What I keep a week away? seven days and nights?

Eight score hours? and lovers’ absent hours,

More tedious than the dial eight score times?

O weary reckoning!

What I should say

My tears gainsay; for every word I speak,

Ye see, I drink the water of mine eyes.

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?

What is the end of study? Let me know?

Why, that to know, which else we should not know.

Things hid and barr’d, you mean, from common sense?

Ay, that is study’s god-like recompense.

What is wedlock forced, but a hell,

An age of discord and continual strife?

Whereas the contrary bringeth forth bliss,

And is a pattern of celestial peace.

What light through yonder window breaks!

It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!—

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon.

What should be spoken here, where our fate,

Hid within an auger-hole, may rush, and seize us?

What should we speak of

When we are old as you? When we shall hear

The rain and wind beat dark December.

What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted!

Thrice is he arm’d that hath his quarrel just;

And he but naked, though lock’d up in steel,

Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.

What surety of the world, what hope, what stay,

When this was now a king, and now is clay!

What thou wilt,

Thou shalt rather enforce it with thy smile,

Than hew to ’t with thy sword.

What valour were it, when a cur doth grin,

For one to thrust his hand between his teeth,

When he might spurn him with his foot, away?

What wind blew you hither, Pistol?

Not the ill wind which blows no man to good.

What work’s, my countrymen, in hand? where go you

With bats and clubs? The matter? speak, I pray you.

What would you have, you curs,

That like nor peace, nor war? the one affrights you,

The other makes you proud. 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.

What, is Brutus sick,

And will he steal out of his wholesome bed,

To dare the vile contagion of the night?

What, is the jay more precious than the lark,

Because his feathers are more beautiful?

Or is the adder better than the eel,

Because his painted skin contents the eye?

What; gone without a word?

Ay, so true love should do: it cannot speak;

For truth hath better deeds than words to grace it.

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!

What’s brave, what’s noble,

Let’s do it after the high Roman fashion,

And make death proud to take us.

What’s gone and what’s past help

Should be past grief.

What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do,

Had he the motive and the cue for passion

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears.

What’s past and what’s to come is strew’d with husks

And formless ruin of oblivion.

What’s the news?

None, my lord, but that the world’s grown honest,

Then is doomsday near.

When beggars die, there are no comets seen;

The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

When by and by the din of war ’gan pierce

His ready sense; then straight his doubled spirit

Re-quicken’d what in flesh was fatigate,

And to the battle came he; where he did

Run reeking o’er the lives of men, as if

’Twere a perpetual spoil; and till we call’d

Both field and city ours he never stood

To ease his breath with panting.

When daisies pied, and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver-white,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue

Do paint the meadows with delight.

When Fortune means to men most good,

She looks upon them with a threatening eye.

When griping griefs the heart doth wound,

And doleful dumps the mind oppress,

*****

Then music, with her silver sound,

With speedy help doth lend redress.

When holy and devout religious men

Are at their beads, ’tis hard to draw them thence;

So sweet is zealous contemplation.

When I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into Charybdis, your mother.

When I was stamp’d, some coiner with his tools

Made me a counterfeit.

When icicles hang by the wall,

And Dick, the shepherd, blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail,

When blood is nipp’d and ways be foul,

Then nightly sings the staring owl,

Tu-whit;

Tu-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When my love swears that she is made of truth,

I do believe her, though I know she lies.

When once our grace we have forgot,

Nothing goes right.

When our actions do not,

Our fears do make us traitors.

When remedies are past, the griefs are ended,

By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended.

To mourn a mischief that is past and gone

Is the next way to draw new mischief on.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies,

But in battalions!

When the fox hath once got in his nose,

He’ll soon find means to make the body follow.

When the searching eye of heaven is hid

Behind the globe, and lights the lower world,

Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen,

In murthers and in outrage boldly here.

When valour preys on reason,

It eats the sword it fights with.

When we mean to build,

We first survey the plot, then draw the model;

And when we see the figure of the house,

Then must we rate the cost of the erection;

Which if we find outweighs ability,

What do we then, but draw anew the model

In fewer offices; or, at least, desist

To build at all?

Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity—

*****

That is not quickly buzz’d into his ears?

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.

Which is the villain? Let me see his eyes;

That when I note another man like him

I may avoid him.

Whip me, ye devils,

Blow me about in winds, roast me in sulphur,

Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire.

Who riseth from a feast,

With that keen appetite that he sits down?

Where is the horse, that doth untread again

His tedious measures with the unabated fire,

That he did pave them first? all things that are,

Are with more spirit chased than enjoy’d.

Who sets me else? by heaven I’ll throw at all;

I have a thousand spirits in one breast,

To answer twenty thousand such as you.

Who should be trusted, when one’s own right hand

Is perjured to the bosom? Proteus,

I am sorry I must never trust thee more,

But count the world a stranger for thy sake.

The private wound is deepest.

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.

Who thinketh to buy villainy with gold,

Shall ever find such faith so bought—so sold.

Who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of dispriz’d 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?

Whose nature is so far from doing harm,

That he suspects none.

Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,

Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,

But that our soft conditions, and our hearts,

Should well agree with our external parts.

Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,

Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee

And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,

Than in the perfum’d chambers of the great,

Under the canopies of costly state,

And lull’d with sound of sweetest melody?

Why tribute? why should we pay tribute? if

Cæsar can hide the sun from us with a

Blanket, or put the moon in his pocket,

We will pay him tribute for light; else, sir,

No more tribute.

Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain,

Which, with pain purchas’d doth inherit pain.

Why, all the souls that are were forfeit once;

And He that might the vantage best have took

Found out the remedy.

Why, courage, then! what cannot be avoided

’Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.

Why, I will fight with him upon this theme

Until my eyelids will no longer wag.

Why, let the stricken deer go weep,

The heart ungalled play;

For some must watch, while some must sleep;

Thus runs the world away.

Why, love forswore me in my mother’s womb:

And, for I should not deal in her soft laws,

She did corrupt frail nature with some bribe

To shrink mine arm up like a wither’d shrub,

To make an envious mountain on my back,

Where sits deformity to make my body;

To shape my legs of an unequal size;

To disproportion me in every part,

Like to a chaos, or an unlick’d bear-whelp,

That carries no impression like the dam.

And am I then a man to be belov’d?

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 dishonorable graves.

Why, what a wasp-tongued and impatient fool

Art thou, to break into this woman’s mood;

Tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own!

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.

Will fortune never come with both hands full,

But write her fair words still in foulest letters?

She either gives a stomach, and no food—

Such as are the poor in health; or else a feast,

And takes away the stomach—such are the rich,

That have abundance, and enjoy it not.

Win her with gifts, if she respect not words:

Dumb jewels often, in their silent kind,

More than quick words, do move a woman’s mind.

Windy attorneys to their client woes,

Airy succeeders of intestate joys,

Poor breathing orators of miseries!

Let them have scope: though what they do impart

Help nothing else, yet do they ease the heart.

Wisdom and fortune combating together,

If that the former dare but what it can,

No chance may shake it.

Wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss,

But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.

With devotion’s visage,

And pious action, we do sugar o’er

The devil himself.

With sad unhelpful tears, and with dimm’d eyes

Look after him and cannot do him good.

Within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king,

Keeps death his court; and there the antick sits,

Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp.

Within this wall of flesh

There is a soul counts thee her creditor,

And with advantage means to pay thy love.

Without the bed her other fair hand was,

On the green coverlet; whose perfect white

Show’d like an April daisy on the grass,

With pearly sweat, resembling dew of night.

Women are angels, wooing:

Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing:

That she belov’d knows nought that knows not this:

Men prize the thing ungain’d more than it is.

Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible;

Thou, stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless.

Wooing thee, I found thee of more value

Than stamps in gold or sums in sealed bags;

And ’tis the very riches of thyself

That now I aim at.

Words are words; I never yet did hear,

That the bruis’d heart was pierced through the ear.

Ye gods, it doth amaze me,

A man of such a feeble temper should

So get the start of the majestic world,

And bear the palm alone.

Yea this man’s brow, like to a tragic leaf,

Foretells the nature of a tragic volume.

Yet do I fear thy nature;

It is too full o’ the milk o’ human kindness.

Yet looks he like a king; behold, his eye,

As bright as is the eagle’s, lightens forth

Controlling majesty.

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 departed friend.

Yon grey lines

That fret the clouds are messengers of day.

You are old;

Nature in you stands on the very verge

Of her confine: you should be ruled and led

By some discretion, that discerns your state

Better than you yourself.

You are yoked with a lamb,

That carries anger as the flint bears fire;

Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,

And straight is cold again.

You ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me;

Let not my worser spirit tempt me again

To die before you please!

You have among you many a purchas’d slave,

Which, like your asses, and your dogs, and mules,

You use in abject and in slavish parts

Because you bought them.

You have seen

Sunshine and rain at once: her smiles and tears

Were like a better day: those happy smiles

That play’d on her ripe lip, seem’d not to know

What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence,

As pearls from diamonds dropp’d.

You have too much respect upon the world:

They lose it that do buy it with much care.

You know that love

Will creep in service where it cannot go.

You know

That I do fawn on men, and hug them hard,

And after scandal them.

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 pil’d upon his faith.

You may my glories and my state depose,

But not my griefs; still am I king of those.

You nimble lightnings, dart your blinding flames

Into her scornful eyes!—Infect her beauty,

You fen-suck’d fogs, drawn by the powerful sun,

To fall and blister her pride!

You play the spaniel,

And think with wagging of your tongue to win me.

You say, you are a better soldier:

Let it appear so; make your vaunting true,

And it shall please me well.

You see me here,—a poor old man,

As full of grief as age; wretched in both!

You sunburnt sicklemen, of August weary,

Come hither from the furrow and be merry:

Make holiday; your rye-straw hats put on

And these fresh nymphs encounter every one

In country footing.

Your affections are

A sick man’s appetite, who desires most that

Which would increase his evil. He that depends

Upon your favor, swims with fins of lead,

And hews down oaks with rushes. Hang ye! Trust ye?

With every minute you do change a mind;

And call him noble that was now your hate,

Him vile that was your garland.

Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars

And brought in matter that should feed this fire;

And now ’tis far too huge to be blown out

With that same weak wind which enkindled it.

Your face, my Thane, is as a book, where men

May read strange matters.

Your fair discourse hath been as sugar,

Making the hard way sweet and delectable.

Your wisdom is consum’d in confidence.

Do not go forth to-day.

A book! oh, rare one! be not, as in this fangled world, a garment nobler than it covers.

A child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman.

A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

A coward; a most devout coward; religious in it.

A dog is obeyed in office.

A dream itself is but a shadow.

A face without a heart.

A February face, so full of frost, of storm, and cloudiness!

A fine volley of words, gentlemen, and quickly shot off.

A flower that dies when first it begins to bud.

A fool’s bolt is soon shot.

A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities.

A gentleman that loves to hear himself talk will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.

A giving hand, though foul, shall have fair praise.

A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross.

A good heart is the sun and moon, or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps its course truly.

A good heart is worth gold.

A good jest forever.

A good man’s fortune may grow out at heels.

A good mouth-filling oath.

A good old man, sir; he will be talking: as they say, When the age is in, the wit is out.

A good wit will make use of anything.

A grandam’s name is little less in love than is the doting title of a mother; they are as children but one step below.

A habitation giddy and unsure hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.

A hand as fruitful as the land that feeds us; His dew falls everywhere.

A heart unspotted is not easily daunted.

A heaven on earth I have won by wooing thee.

A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it, never in the tongue of him that makes it.

A killing tongue and a quiet sword.

A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.

A light heart lives long.

A light wife doth make a heavy husband.

A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing: for there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion living.

A little more than kin, and less than kind.

A little snow, tumbled about, anon becomes a mountain.

A long-tongued, babbling gossip!

A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind.

A maiden hath no tongue but thought.

A maiden never bold; of spirit so still and quiet that her motion blushed at herself.

A man can die but once.

A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.

A man may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards has taken with equal thanks.

A man’s life’s no more than to say, One!

A plague of all cowards, I say.

A plague of sighing and grief! it blows a man up like a bladder.

A plague upon it when thieves cannot be true one to another!

A rotten cause abides no handling.

A scar nobly got is a good livery of honor.

A smile recures the wounding of a frown.

A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.

A soldier seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon’s mouth.

A stirring dwarf we do allowance give before a sleeping giant.

A surfeit of the sweetest things the deepest loathing to the stomach brings.

A sympathy in choice.

A tardiness in Nature, which often leaves the history unspoke, that it intends to do.

A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers.

A villain with a smiling cheek.

A wicked conscience mouldeth goblins swift as frenzy thoughts.

A withered hermit, fivescore winters worn, might shake off fifty, looking in her eye.

A woman moved is like a fountain troubled, muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.

A woman’s fitness comes by fits.

A woman’s thought runs before her actions.

A world-without-end bargain.

A young man married is a man that’s marred.

Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant are more learned than their ears.

Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy.

Affection, mistress of passion, sways it to the mood of what it likes or loathes.

Affliction may one day smile again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow!

After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.

After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you lived.

Against self-slaughter there is a prohibition so divine, that cravens my weak hand.

Alas! alas! why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once; and he that might the vantage best have took found out the remedy.

All impediments in fancy’s course are motives of more fancy.

All offences come from the heart.

All orators are dumb, when beauty pleadeth.

All pride in willing pride.

All surfeit is the father of much fast.

All that glitters is not gold.

All that live must die, passing through nature to eternity.

All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

All these you may avoid but the Lie Direct; and you may avoid that too, with an If. I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel, but when the parties were met themselves, one of them thought but of an If, as “If you said so, then I said so;” and they shook hands and swore brothers. Your If is the only peace-maker; much virtue in If.

All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.

All’s not offence that indiscretion finds.

All’s well that ends well, still the finis is the crown.

All, with one consent, praise new-born gauds, though they are made and moulded of things past.

Allow not nature more than nature needs.

Although the last, not least.

An affable and courteous gentleman.

An arrant traitor as any is in the universal world, or in France, or in England.

An envious fever of pale and bloodless emulation.

An eye like Mars, to threaten or command.

An honest man, sir, is able to speak for himself, when a knave is not.

An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told.

An oak whose boughs were mossed with age, and high top bald with dry antiquity.

An old man is twice a child.

And blind oblivion swallowed cities up.

And either victory, or else a grave.

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

And her immortal part with angels lives.

And his kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of holy bread.

And how his audit stands who knows, save Heaven?

And more such days as these to us befall!

And send him many years of sunshine days!

And steal immortal kisses from her lips; which even in pure and vestal modesty still blush as thinking their own kisses sin.

And steep my senses in forgetfulness.

And that same dew, which some time on the buds was wont to swell like round and orient pearls, stood now within the pretty floweret’s eyes, like tears that did their own disgrace bewail.

And then a whoreson jackanapes must take me up for swearing; as if I borrowed mine oaths of him, and might not spend them at my leisure.

And thereby hangs a tale.

And this cuff was but to knock at your ear, and beseech listening.

And wet his grave with my repentant tears.

And witch the world with noble horsemanship.

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.

Anger is like a full hot horse; who, being allowed his way, self-mettle tires him.

As a walled town is more worthier than a village, so is the forehead of a married man more honorable than the bare brow of a bachelor.

As adversaries in law, strive mightily; but eat and drink as friends.

As chaste as is the bud ere it be blown.

As chaste as unsunn’d snow.

As fresh as morning dew distill’d on flowers.

As full of spirit as the month of May.

As good luck would have it.

As merry as the day is long.

As prodigal of all dear grace as Nature was in making graces dear.

As surfeit is the father of much fast, so every scope by the immoderate use turns to restraint.

As the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, so honor peereth in the meanest habit.

As you are old and reverend, you should be wise.

Assume a virtue if you have it not.

At love’s perjuries they say Jove laughs.

Authority, though it err like others, hath yet a kind of medicine in itself, that skins the vice of the top.

Away with him, away with him! he speaks Latin.

Ay, every inch a king.

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.

Back-wounding calumny the whitest virtue strikes.

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast.

Base is the slave that pays.

Bashful sincerity and comely love.

Be checked for silence, but never taxed for speech.

Be great in act, as you have been in thought.

Be just, and fear not: let all the ends thou aimest at be thy country’s, thy God’s, and truth’s.

Be sad, good brothers, for, by my faith, it very well becomes you: sorrow so royally in you appears, that I will deeply put the fashion on.

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

Beauty doth varnish age.

Beauty is a witch, against whose charms faith melteth into blood.

Beauty itself doth itself persuade the eyes of men without an orator.

Beauty lives with kindness.

Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.

Beauty, wit, high birth, vigor of bone, desert in service, love, friendship, charity, are subjects all to envious and calumniating time.

Before the curing of a strong disease, even in the instant of repair and health, the fit is strongest.

Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks, but I thank you.

Begin to patch up thine old body for heaven.

Best men oft are moulded out of faults.

Better a little chiding than a great deal of heart-break.

Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.

Better be with the dead, whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace, than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy.

Better conquest never canst thou make than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts against giddy, loose suggestions.

Beware of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee.

Bid that welcome which comes to punish us, and we punish it, seeming to bear it lightly.

Bid the cheek be ready with a blush, modest as Morning when she coldly eyes the youthful Phœbus.

Blessed are those whose blood and judgment are so well commingled that they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger to sound what stop she please.

Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud.

Bounty, being free itself, thinks all others so.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Brief abstract and record of tedious days.

Bring me no more reports.

But earthlier happy is the rose distilled than that which, withering on the virgin thorn, grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness.

But for your words, they rob the Hybla bees, and leave them honeyless.

But I have that within, which passeth show; these but the trappings and the suits of woe.

But if you swear by that that is not, you are not forsworn; no more was this knight, swearing by his honor, for he never had any.

But one Puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes.

But screw your courage to the sticking place and we’ll not fail.

But yet, I say, if imputation and strong circumstances, which lead directly to the door of truth, will give you satisfaction, you may have it.

By a divine instinct, men’s minds mistrust ensuing danger; as, by proof, we see the waters swell before a boisterous storm.

By our remembrances of days foregone.

By that sin angels fell.

By the Apostle Paul, shadows tonight have struck more terror to the soul of Richard than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers.

Call them again, my lord, and accept their suit.

Calumny will sear virtue itself; these shrugs, these hums and ha’s.

Can one desire too much of a good thing?

Can virtue hide itself? Go to, mum, you are he; graces will appear, and there’s an end.

Can we outrun the heavens?

Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose to the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude, and in the calmest and most stillest night, with all appliances and means to boot, deny it to a king?

Care is no cure, but rather corrosive for things that are not to be remedied.

Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye.

Cease to lament for that thou canst not help; and study help for that which thou lamentest.

Celerity is never more admired than by the negligent.

Certain drops of salt.

Charity, which renders good for bad, blessings for curses.

Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy.

Clay and clay differs in dignity, whose dust is both alike.

Comb down his hair; look, look! it stands upright.

Come civil night, thou sober-suited matron, all in black.

Come like shadows, so depart!

Come, give us a taste of your quality.

Come, swear it, damn thyself, lest, being like one of heaven, the devils themselves should fear to seize thee; therefore be double-damned, swear,—thou art honest.

Come, we have a hot venison pasty to dinner; come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.

Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me.

Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.

Condemn the fault, but not the actor.

Condemned into everlasting redemption for this.

Confess thee freely of thy sin; for to deny each article with oath, cannot remove nor choke the strong conception that I do groan withal.

Confess yourself to Heaven; repent what is past; avoid what is to come; and do not spread the compost on the weeds, to make them ranker.

Conscience is a blushing, shamefaced spirit that mutinies in a man’s bosom; it fills one full of obstacles.

Conscience is a thousand swords.

Constant you are, but yet a woman; and for secrecy, no lady closer; for I well believe thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know.

Contention, like a horse full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose, and bears down all before him.

Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy; for the apparel oft proclaims the man.

Could not all this flesh keep in a little life? Poor Jack, farewell! I could have better spared a better man.

Courage mounteth with occasion.

Cowards die many times before their death.

Crabbed age and youth cannot live together.

Cry “Havock,” and let slip the dogs of war.

Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin.

Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen.

Deal mildly with his youth; for young hot colts, being raged, do rage the more.

Death lies on her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of all the field.

Death of thy soul! those linen cheeks of thine are counsellors to fear.

Death will have his day.

Death, as the psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die.

Death, remembered, should be like a mirror, who tells us life is but a breath; to trust it, error.

Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.

Delays have dangerous ends.

Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light.

Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio.

Die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year.

Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes.

Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan, puffing at all, winnows the light away.

Do but see his vice; ’t is to his virtue a just equinox, the one as long as the other.

Do not give dalliance too much the rein; the strongest oaths are straw to the fire in the blood.

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine, himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, and recks not his own rede.

Do you know what a man is? Are not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?

Done to death by slanderous tongues.

Doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.

Down, thou climbing sorrow.

Downy sleep, death’s counterfeit.

Dreams are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy; which is as thin of substance as the air, and more inconstant than the wind.

Dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. And I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is but a shadow’s shadow.

Drones suck not eagles’ blood, but rob beehives.

Dull not device by coldness and delay.

Dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance.

Dumb jewels often, in their silent kind, more than quick words, do move a woman’s mind.

Each present joy or sorrow seems the chief.

Emulation hath a thousand sons, that one by one pursue; if you give way, or edge aside from the direct forthright, like to an entered tide, they all rush by, and leave you hindmost.

England is safe, if true within itself.

Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber.

Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor.

Every bondman in his own hand bears the power to cancel his captivity.

Every inordinate cup is unblessed and the ingredient is a devil.

Every man has business and desire, such as it is.

Every one can master a grief but he that has it.

Every one fault seeming monstrous till his fellow-fault came to match it.

Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own.

Every true man’s apparel fits your thief.

Every why hath a wherefore.

Experience is a jewel, and it had need be so, for it is often purchased at an infinite rate.

Experience teacheth us that resolution is a sole help in need.

Extremity is the trier of spirits.

Eye-offending brine.

Eyes and ears, two traded pilots ’twixt the dangerous shores of will and judgment.

Fairies use flowers for their charactery.

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.

False as stairs of sand.

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

Falstaff sweats to death, and lards the lean earth as he walks along.

Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins, that almost freezes up the heat of life.

Farewell, and stand fast.

Farewell; and let your haste commend your duty.

Faster than his tongue did make offense, his eye did heal it up.

Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought.

Fasting maids whose minds are dedicate to nothing temporal.

Fat paunches have lean pates.

Fates! we will know your pleasures: that we shall die, we know; ’tis but the time, and drawing days out, that men stand upon.

Fear and niceness, the handmaids of all women, or more truly, woman its pretty self.

Fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns.

Fetter strong madness in a silken thread.

Few love to hear the sins they love to act.

Fie! what a spendthrift he is of his tongue!

Fie, fie, how frantically I square my talk!

Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier and afear’d?

Fight valiantly to-day; and yet I do thee wrong to mind thee of it, for thou art framed of the firm truth of valor.

Fire drives out fire; so pity, pity.

Fire that is closest kept burns most of all.

Fire that’s closest kept burns most of all.

Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.

Flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar.

Flora peering in April’s front.

Flowers are like the pleasures of the world.

Food for powder, food for powder; they’ll fill a pit as well as better: tush, man, mortal men, mortal men.

Fools are not mad folks.

For ’tis not good that children should know any wickedness: old folks, you know, have discretion, as they say, and know the world.

For aught I see, they are as sick, that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing; it is no mean happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean; superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.

For grief is crowned with consolation.

For her own person, it beggared all description.

For his bounty, there was no winter in ’t; an autumn ’t was that grew the more by reaping.

For his dreams, I wonder he’s so simple to trust the mockery of unquiet slumbers.

For honesty coupled to beauty, is to have honey a sauce to sugar.

For I am nothing if not critical.

For I am proverbed with a grandsire phrase.

For it comes to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him.

For men, like butterflies, show not their mealy wings but to the summer.

For my own part, I shall be glad to learn of noble men.

For my part, if a lie may do thee grace, I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.

For my voice, I have lost it with hollaing and singing of anthems.

For 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.

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.

For some must watch, while some must sleep; so runs the world away.

For the rain it raineth every day.

For they say, if money go before, all ways do lie open.

For use almost can change the stamp of nature.

For what I will, I will, and there an end.

Forbear sharp speeches to her; she’s a lady so tender of rebukes that words are strokes, and strokes death to her.

Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.

Forget, forgive; conclude, and be agreed.

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.

Foul whisperings are abroad.

Frailty, thy name is woman!

France is a dog-hole, and it no more merits the tread of a man’s foot.

Friends, I owe more tears to this dead man than you shall see me pay.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.

Friendship is constant in all other things, save in the office and affairs of love.

Friendship is full of dregs.

From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.

From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot he is all mirth; he has twice or thrice cut Cupid’s bow-string, and the little hangman dare not shoot at him: he hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper; for what his heart thinks his tongue speaks.

Fruits that blossom first will first be ripe.

Full of wise saws and modern instances.

Full oft we see cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.

Gently to hear, kindly to judge.

Gilded tombs do worms infold.

Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.

Give him gold enough, and marry him to a puppet, or an aglet-baby; or an old trot with ne’er a tooth in her head, though she have as many diseases as two and fifty horses; why, nothing comes amiss, so money comes withal.

Give me your hand first; fare you well.

Give them great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils.

Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.

Give you a reason on compulsion! If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion.

Glory grows guilty of detested crimes.

Gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite the man that mocks at it, and sets it light.

Go to your bosom, knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

God befriend us, as our cause is just.

God defend the right.

God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

God hath blessed you with a good name: to be a well-favored man is the gift of fortune, but to write and read comes by nature.

God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.

God on our side, doubt not of victory.

God pardon them that are the cause thereof! A virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion, to pray of them that have done scath to us.

God, the best maker of all marriages, combine your hearts in one, your realms in one.

Gold that is put to use more gold begets.

Gold—what can it not do, and undo?

Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Good luck lies in odd numbers***they say, there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death.

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, is the immediate jewel of their souls.

Good reasons must, of force, give place to better.

Good things should be praised.

Good wine needs no bush.

Good words are better than bad strokes.

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.

Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in Venice: but his reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff; you seek all day ere you find them; and when you have them, they are not worth the search.

Great griefs medicine the less.

Great men should drink with harness on their throats.

Greatness knows itself.

Greatness, once fallen out with fortune, must fall out with men too.

Grief best is pleased with grief’s society.

Grief is crowned with consolation.

Grim-visag’d war hath smoothed his wrinkled front.

Guiltiness will speak, though tongues were out of use.

Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge had stomach for them all.

Had doting Priam checked his son’s desire, Troy had been bright with fame, and not with fire.

Had I a dozen sons, each in my love alike, I had rather have eleven die nobly for their country, than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.

Hang an epitaph on her tomb.

Hang those that talk of fear.

Hanging and wiving goes by destiny.

Hardness ever of hardness is mother.

Harp not on that string.

Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he sings at grave-making? Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.

Haste is needful in a desperate case.

Haste me to know it; that I with wings as swift as meditation, or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge.

Hasty marriage seldom proveth well.

Have at you with a proverb.

Have you not love enough to bear with me, when that rash humor which my mother gave me makes me forgetful.

He does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.

He does me double wrong, that wounds me with the flatteries of his tongue.

He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.

He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines, and darts his light through every guilty hole.

He hath a heart as sound as a bell and his tongue is the clapper, for what his heart thinks his tongue speaks.

He hath a tear for pity, and a hand open as day for melting charity!

He hath borne himself beyond the promise of his age, doing, in the figure of a lamb, the feats of a lion.

He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts.

He hath out-villained villainy so far, that the rarity redeems him.

He in peace is wounded, not in war.

He is a very valiant trencher-man.

He is a worthy gentleman, exceedingly well read and profited in strange concealments.

He is divinely bent on meditation.

He is well paid that is well satisfied.

He jests at scars that never felt a wound.

He kissed me hard, as though he’d pluck up kisses by the roots that grew upon my lips.

He lives in fame, that died in virtue’s cause.

He must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil.

He must needs go that the devil drives.

He speaks home; you may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar.

He that dies pays all debts.

He that dies this year is quit for the next.

He that doth the ravens feed, yea, providently caters for the sparrow, be comfort to my age.

He that is proud eats up himself; pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle; and whatever praises itself but in the deed devours the deed in the praise.

He that loves to be flattered is worthy o’ the flatterer.

He that of greatest works is finisher oft does them by the weakest minister: so holy writ in babes hath judgment shown, when judges have been babes.

He that wants money, means and content, is without three good friends.

He that will have a cake of the wheat must needs tarry the grinding.

He wants wit that wants resolved will.

He was a wise fellow, and had good discretion, that, being bid to ask what he would of the king, desired he might know none of his secrets.

He waxes desperate with imagination.

He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the next block.

He wears the rose of youth upon him.

He who the sword of heaven will bear should be as holy as severe.

He will give the devil his due.

He will lie, sir, with such volubility that you would think truth were a fool.

He will steal himself into a man’s favor and for a week escape a great deal of discoveries; but when you find him out, you have him ever after.

He would make his will lord of his reason.

He’s truly valiant that can wisely suffer the worst that man can breathe.

Headstrong liberty is lashed with woe.

Hear me for my cause, and be silent that you may hear.

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it doth singe yourself. We may outrun by violent swiftness that which we run at, and lose by overrunning.

Heaven give you many, many merry days!

Heaven is above all yet; there sits a Judge that no king can corrupt.

Heaven never helps the man who will not act.

Heaven’s above all; and there be souls that must be saved, and there be souls that must not be saved.

Heaven, the treasury of everlasting joy!

Heaven, the widow’s champion and defence.

Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, as a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear.

Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheathed their light, and, canopied in darkness, sweetly lay, till they might open to adorn the day.

Her gentle spirit commits itself to yours to be directed, as from her lord, her governor, her king.

Her hand, in whose comparison all whites are ink writing their own reproach, to whose soft seizure the cygnet’s down is harsh, and spirit of sense hard as the palm of ploughman!

Her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love. We cannot call her winds and waters, sighs and tears; they are greater storms and tempests than almanacs can report. This cannot be cunning in her. If it be, she makes a shower of rain as well as Jove.

Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low; an excellent thing in woman.

Here are a few of the unpleasantest words that ever blotted paper!

Hereafter, in a better world than this, I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.

His cheek the map of days outworn.

His hair is of a good color,—an excellent color; your chestnut was ever the only color.

His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth.

His nature is too noble for the world; he would not flatter Neptune for his trident, or Jove for his power to thunder.

His nice fence and his active practice.

His noble hand did win what he did spend.

His reasons are 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.

His tongue is now a stringless instrument.

His worth is warrant for his welcome.

Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.

Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief.

Honest water, which ne’er left man in the mire.

Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite, to follow as it draws.

Hope is a lover’s staff.

Horribly stuffed with epithets of war.

Hostess, clap to the doors; watch to-night, pray to-morrow. Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold, all the titles of good fellowship come to you! What, shall we be merry? Shall we have a play extempore?

How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!

How easy it is for the proper-false in woman’s waxen hearts to set their forms!

How far that little candle throws his beams! so shines a good deed in a naughty world.

How i’ the name of thrift doth he rake this together?

How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!

How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green!

How many a holy and obsequious tear hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye, as interest of the dead!

How many cowards wear yet upon their chins the beards of Hercules and frowning Mars!

How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!

How much an ill word may empoison liking!

How pomp is followed!

How quickly nature falls into revolt when gold becomes her object!

How see that noble and most sovereign reason, like sweet bells jangled, out of time, and harsh.

How sometimes nature will betray its folly, its tenderness, and make itself a pastime to harder bosoms!

How sour sweet music is, when time is broke, and no proportion kept!

How tartly that gentleman looks! I never can see him but I am heart-burned an hour after.

How use doth breed a habit in a man! This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods, I better brook than flourishing peopled towns.

How wayward is this foolish love, that, like a testy babe, will scratch the nurse and presently, all humble, kiss the rod.

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

How well he is read, to reason against reading!

How would you be if He, which is the top of judgment, should but judge you as you are? O, think on that, and mercy then will breathe within your lips like man new made.

However we do praise ourselves, our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, more longing, wavering, sooner lost and won, than women’s are.

However wickedness outstrips men, it has no wings to fly from God.

I am a feather for each wind that blows.

I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.

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?

I am afraid to think what I have done; look on it again I dare not.

I am an ass, indeed, you may prove it by my long ears. I have served him from the hour of my nativity to this instant, and have nothing at his hands for my service but blows. When I am cold, he heats me with beating.

I am as poor as Job, my lord, but not so patient.

I am constant as the Northern Star, of whose true-fixed and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.

I am ill at reckoning; it fits the spirit of a tapster.

I am never merry when I hear sweet music.

I am not in the roll of common men.

I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.

I am not prone to weeping as our sex commonly are; the want of which vain dew perchance shall dry your pities; but I have that honorable grief lodged here which burns worse than tears drown.

I am one whom the vile blows and buffets of the world have so incensed that I am reckless what I do to spite the world.

I am sure care’s an enemy to life.

I am the very pink of courtesy.

I am wrapped in dismal thinking.

I and my bosom must debate awhile, and then I would no other company.

I came, saw, and overcame.

I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.

I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable.

I can smile, and murther while I smile.

I can suck melancholy out of a song.

I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.

I do beseech you—chiefly that I may set it in my prayers—what is your name?

I do hate a proud man, as I hate the engendering of toads.

I do know when the blood burns, how prodigal the soul lends the tongue vows.

I do not like this fooling.

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.

I dote on his very absence.

I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness; glad of other men’s good, content with my harm.

I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.

I follow him to serve my turn upon him; we cannot all be masters, nor all masters cannot be truly followed.

I had rather eleven died nobly for their country than one voluptuously surfeit out of action.

I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad.

I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people.

I have given suck, and know how tender it is to love the babe that milks me.

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was.

I have heard of some kind of men that put quarrels purposely on others, to taste their valor.

I have immortal longings in me.

I have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of discretion.

I have set my life upon a cast, and I will stand the hazard of the die.

I have sounded the very base-string of humility.

I have that honorable grief lodged here which burns worse than tears drown.

I have ventured like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, this many summers in a sea of glory, but far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride at length broke under me.

I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking: I could wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment.

I have you on the hip.

I hold your dainties cheap, sir, and your welcome dear.

I hourly learn a doctrine of obedience.

I let fall the windows of mine eyes.

I love a ballad but even too well; if it be doleful matter, merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed, and sung lamentably.

I love my country’s good, with a respect more tender, more holy and profound than my own life.

I must be cruel, only to be kind.

I must to the barber’s;***for methinks I am marvelous hairy about the face.

I never heard yet that any of these bolder vices wanted less impudence to gainsay what they did, than to perform it first.

I pardon him, as God shall pardon me.

I pray thee, leave me to myself tonight; for I have need of many orisons to move the heavens to smile upon my state, which, well thou knowest, is cross and full of sin.

I prythee, take the cork out of thy mouth that I may drink thy tidings.

I rather tell thee what is to be feared than what I fear; for always I am Cæsar.

I reckon this always,—that a man is never undone till he be hanged; nor never welcome to a place till some certain shot be paid and the hostess say, Welcome.

I so lively acted with my tears that my poor mistress, moved therewithal, wept bitterly.

I stay too long by thee; I weary thee.

I thank God I am not a woman, to be touched with so many giddy offences as He hath generally taxed their whole sex withal.

I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that’s in me should set hell on fire.

I to myself am dearer than a friend.

I was never so bethumped with words since first I called my brother’s father dad.

I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

I will ask him for my place again: he shall tell me I am a drunkard. Had I as many mouths as Hydra, such an answer would stop them all. To be now a sensible man; by and by a fool, and presently a beast. O strange! Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil.

I will be brief.

I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following, but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you.

I will chide no heathen in the world, but myself, against whom I know most faults.

I will instruct my sorrows to be proud.

I will keep where there is wit stirring, and leave the faction of fools.

I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways.

I will not change my horse with any that treads but on four pasterns. When I bestride him I soar, I am a hawk; he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it.

I will speak daggers to her, but use none.

I wish you all the joy that you can wish.

I would applaud thee to the very echo, that should applaud again.

I would be loath to cast away my speech; for, besides that it is excellently well penn’d, I have taken great pains to con it.

I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety.

I would the gods had made thee poetical.

I would thou and I knew where a commodity of good names were to be bought.

I’ll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked.

I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads.

I’ll haunt thee like a wicked conscience still.

I’ll not budge an inch.

I’ll speak to thee in silence.

I, I, I myself, sometimes, leaving the fear of heaven on the left hand, and hiding mine honor in my necessity, am fain to shuffle, to hedge, and to lurch.

If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monument than the bell rings and the widow weeps.***An hour in clamor, and a quarter in rheum.

If ever (as that ever may be near) you meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy, then shall you know the wounds invisible that love’s keen arrows make.

If ever you have looked on better days, if ever been where bells have knolled to church, if ever sat at any good man’s feast, if ever from your eyelids wiped a tear and know what ’tis to pity and be pitied, let gentleness my strong enforcement sue.

If he be not in love with some woman, there is no believing old signs; a’ brushes his hat of o’ mornings; what should that bode?

If hearty sorrow be a sufficient ransom for offence, I tender it here; I do as truly suffer as e’er I did commit.

If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me: I had it from my father.

If I for my opinion bleed, opinion shall be surgeon to my hurt, and keep me on the side where still I am.

If I lose mine honor, I lose myself.

If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride, and hug it in mine arms.

If money go before, all ways do lie open.

If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it; that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die.

If our virtues did not go forth of us, it were all alike as if we had them not.

If she be not honest, chaste, and true, there’s no man happy.

If the assassination could trammel up the consequence, and catch, with his surcease, success; that but this blow might be the be-all and the end-all here,—but here, upon this bank and shoal of time, we’d jump the life to come.

If there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another; I hope, upon familiarity will grow more contempt.

If thou art rich, thou art poor; for, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, and death unloads thee.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages, princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions. I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.

If you bethink yourself of any crime, unreconciled as yet to heaven and grace, solicit for it straight.

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

Ignorance is the curse of God, knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.

Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.

Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word.

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.

In a false quarrel there is no true valor.

In friendship, as in love, we are often happier through our ignorance than our knowledge.

In limited professions there’s boundless theft.

In maiden meditation, fancy free.

In nature there’s no blemish but the mind; none can be called deformed but the unkind.

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war flows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger.

In sickness let me not so much say, am I getting better of my pain? as am I getting better for it?

In simple and pure soul I come to you.

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.

In struggling with misfortunes lies the true proof of virtue.

In such a time as this it is not meet that every nice offence should bear its comment.

In the dead vast and middle of the night.

In the quick forge and working house of thought.

In this state she gallops, night by night, o’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream.

In thy face I see the map of honor, truth, and loyalty.

In time we hate that which we often fear.

Inconstancy falls off ere it begins.

Ingrateful man with liquorish draughts, and morsels unctuous, greases his pure mind that from it all consideration slips.

Ingratitude is monstrous; and for the multitude to be ingrateful were to make a monster of the multitude.

Instinct is a great matter; I was a coward on instinct.

Is ’t possible? Sits the wind in that corner?

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?

Is the jay more precious than the lark because his feathers are more beautiful? Or is the adder better than the eel because his painted skin contents the eye?

It adds a precious seeing to the eye.

It eases some, though none it ever cured, to think their sorrows others have endured.

It is a blushing, shame-faced spirit, that mutinies in a man’s bosom; it fills one full of obstacles; it made me once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found; it beggars any man that keeps it; it is turned out of all towns and cities for a dangerous thing; and every man that means to live well endeavors to trust to himself, and live without it.

It is a good divine that follows his own instructions; I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than to be one of the twenty to follow mine own teachings.

It is a sin to be a mocker.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

It is 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.

It is as hard to come, as for a camel to thread the postern of a needle’s eye.

It is but a base, ignoble mind that mounts no higher than a bird can soar.

It is certain that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught as men take diseases one of another; therefore, let men take heed of their company.

It is far off; and rather like a dream than an assurance that my remembrance warrants.

It is gold which buys admittance; and it is gold which makes the true man killed, and saves the thief; nay, sometimes hangs both thief and true man; what can it not do and undo?

It is held that valor is the chiefest virtue, and most dignifies the haver.

It is impious in a good man to be sad.

It is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself; it is needful that you frame the season for your own harvest.

It is lost at dice, what ancient honor won.

It is meet that noble minds keep ever with their likes; for who so firm, that cannot be seduced?

It is not enough to help the feeble up, but to support him after.

It is now the very witching time of night; when churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood, and do such business as the bitter day would quake to look on.

It is one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.

It is silliness to live when to live is a torment; and then we have a prescription to die when death is our physician.

It is the bright day that brings forth the adder, and that craves wary walking.

It is the curse of service; preferment goes by letter and affection, not by the old gradation where each second stood heir to the first.

It is the first that ever I heard breaking of ribs was sport for ladies.

It is the mind that makes the body rich.

It is the very error of the moon; she comes more near earth than she was wont, and makes men mad.

It is the witness still of excellency to put a strange face on his own perfection.

It is time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.

It was always yet the trick of our English nation, if they have a good thing, to make it too common.

It was the lark, the herald of the morn.

It was the nightingale, and not the lark, that pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear; nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree.

It will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass.

Jealousy—it is a green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.

Jesters do often prove prophets.

Jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-top.

Jove and my stars be praised! Here is yet a postscript.

Judgment hath bred a kind of remorse in me.

Just death, kind umpire of men’s miseries.

Justice always whirls in equal measure.

Keep this remembrance for thy Julia’s sake.

Keep thy friend under thy own life’s key.

Keep you in the rear of your affection, out of the shot and danger of desire.

Kindness in woman, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love.

Kindness nobler ever than revenge.

Kiss the rod.

Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career of laughter with a sigh?

Knavery’s plain face is never seen till used.

Know you not, master, to some kind of men their graces serve them but as enemies? No more do yours; your virtues, gentle master, are sanctified and holy traitors to you. Oh, what a world is this, when what is comely envenoms him that bears it!

Larded all with sweet flowers, which bewept to the grave did go, with true-love showers.

Last scene of all, that ends this strange, eventful history, is second childishness, and mere oblivion; sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Lawless are they that make their wills their law.

Lay her i’ the earth; and from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring.

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul.

Learning is but an adjunct to ourself, and where we are our learning likewise is.

Leave her to heaven and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, to prick and sting her.

Let every eye negotiate for itself, and trust no agent.

Let gentleness thy strong enforcement be.

Let me be cruel, not unnatural; I will speak daggers to her; but use none; my tongue and soul in this be hypocrites.

Let me embrace these sour adversities, for wise men say it is the wisest course.

Let me have men about me that are fat; sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o’ nights; yonder Cassius has a lean and hungry look; he thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

Let me hear from thee by letters.

Let me play the fool; witty mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come; and let my liver rather heat with wine than my heart cool with mortifying groans. Why should a man whose blood is warm within sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster, sleep when he wakes, and creep into the jaundice by being peevish.

Let me say “amen” betimes, lest the devil cross my prayer.

Let me wipe off this honorable dew, that silverly doth progress on thy cheeks.

Let men say, we be men of good government; being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal.

Let none presume to wear an undeserved dignity.

Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls.

Let still the woman take an elder than herself; so wears she to him, so sways she level in her husband’s heart.

Let the end try the man.

Let the galled jade wince.

Let the sap of reason quench the fire of passion.

Let them obey that know not how to rule.

Let there be gall enough in thy ink; though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter.

Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them.

Let us be sacrificers, but no butchers.

Let us not burthen our remembrance with a heaviness that’s gone.

Let us teach ourselves that honorable step, not to outdo discretion.

Let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action.

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.

Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs.

Lie ten nights awake carving the fashion of a new doublet.

Life is a shuttle.

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.

Life’s but a walking shadow.

Light and lust are deadly enemies.

Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile; so, ere you find where light in darkness lies, your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.

Like bright metal on a sullen ground, my reformation, glittering over my fault, shall show more goodly and attract more eyes than that which hath no foil to set it off.

Like madness is the glory of this life.

Like Niobe, all tears.

Like one who draws the model of a house beyond his power to build it, who, half through, gives o’er, and leaves his part-created cost a naked subject to the weeping clouds.

Liquid pearl.

Loan oft loses both itself and friend.

Loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.

Look how the world’s poor people are amazed at apparitions, signs and prodigies!

Look on beauty, and you shall see ’tis purchased by the weight; which therein works a miracle in Nature, making them lightest that wear most of it: so are those crispèd snaky golden locks which make such wanton gambols with the wind upon supposed fairness, often known to be the dowry of a second head, the skull that bred them in the sepulchre.

Look, he’s winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.

Loose now and then a scattered smile, and that I will live upon.

Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love.

Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs.

Love is full of unbefitting strains; all wanton as a child, skipping, and vain; formed by the eye, and therefore, like the eye, full of strange shapes, of habits, and of forms.

Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.

Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds; love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.

Love reasons without reason.

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.

Love thyself last.

Love will not be spurred to what it loathes.

Love yourself; and in that love not unconsidered leave your honor.

Love’s sentinel.

Lowliness is young ambition’s ladder, whereto the climber upward turns his face; but when he once attains the upmost round, he then unto the ladder turns his back, looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend.

Macbeth does murder sleep, the innocent sleep.

Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.

Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.

Maids want nothing but husbands; and when they have them they want everything.

Make false hair, and thatch your poor thin roofs with burthens of the dead.

Make the doors upon a woman’s wit, and it will out at the casement; shut that, and ’twill out at the keyhole; stop that, ’twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.

Man delights not me,—nor woman neither.

Many a man’s tongue shakes out his master’s undoing.

Many dream not to find, neither deserve, and yet are steeped in favors.

Marry, sir, they praise me, and make an ass of me; now my foes tell me plainly I am an ass; so that by my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself.

Master, master! news, old news, and such news as you never heard of.

Melancholy is the nurse of frenzy.

Mellowed by the stealing hours of time.

Memory, the warder of the brain!

Men are April when they woo, December when they wed.

Men are men; the best sometimes forget.

Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.

Men have marble, women waxen, minds.

Men in rage strike those that wish them best.

Men of few words are the best men.

Men prize the thing ungained more than it is.

Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

Men that make envy and crooked malice nourishment, dare bite the best.

Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.

Men’s vows are women’s traitors.

Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.

Merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks.

Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.

Methinks sometimes that 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.

Miracles are ceased; and therefore we must needs admit the means, how things are perfected.

Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

Misery makes sport to mock itself.

Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead; excessive grief the enemy to the living.

Modern wisdom plucks me from over-credulous haste.

Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.

Money is a good soldier, sir, and will on.

Moonshine revellers.

More water glideth by the mill than wots the miller of.

Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.

Much is the force of heaven-bred poesy.

Much rain wears the marble.

Must I give way and room to your rash choler? Shall I be frighted when a madman stares?

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.

My grief lies onward and my joy behind.

My heart is ever at your service.

My heart laments that virtue cannot live out of the teeth of emulation.

My library was dukedom large enough.

My man’s as true as steel.

My master hath been an honorable gentleman: tricks he hath had in him which gentleman have.

My May of life is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; and that which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but in their stead, curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not.

My poverty, but not my will, consents.

My thoughts are whirled like a potter’s wheel.

My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will.

Natural graces, that extinguish art.

Nature hath meal and bran, contempt and grace.

Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.

Nature’s tears are reason’s merriment.

Nature, as it grows again toward earth, is fashioned for the journey, dull and heavy.

Naught is had, all is spent, where our desire is got without content.

Nay, her foot speaks.

Never anger made good guard for itself.

Never anything can be amiss when simpleness and duty tender it.

New customs, though they be never so ridiculous,—nay, let them be unmanly,—yet are followed.

No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.

No ceremony that to great ones belongs,—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.

No evil lost is wailed when it is gone.

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

No man means evil but the devil, and we shall know him by his horns.

No metal can—no, not the hangman’s axe—bear half the keenness of thy sharp envy.

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?

No particular scandal one can touch but it confounds the breather.

No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize.

No remedy against this consumption of the purse; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable.

No scandal about Queen Elizabeth, I hope.

No sooner met but they looked, no sooner looked but they loved, no sooner loved but they sighed, no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason, no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy.

No visor does become black villainy so well as soft and tender flattery.

No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.

No, madame, ’tis not so well that I am poor; though many of the rich are damned.

None can cure their harms by wailing them.

Nor age so eat up my invention.

Not a courtier, although they wear their faces to the bent of the king’s looks, hath a heart that is not glad at the thing they scowl at.

Not Hercules could have knocked out his brains, for he had none.

Not that I loved Cæsar less, but that I loved Rome more.

Nothing can we call our own but death, and that small model of the barren earth which serves as paste and cover to our bones.

Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.

Nothing routs us but the villainy of our fears.

Nought so vile that on the earth doth live, but to the earth some special good doth give.

Now by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss I carried from thee, dear; my true lip hath virgined it ever since.

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh.

Now, infidel, I have thee on the hip.

Now, my masters, happy man be his dole, say I; every man to his business.

Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered!

O day and night, but this is wondrous strange.

O dissembling courtesy! how fine this tyrant can tickle where she wounds!

O earth! I will befriend thee more with rain than youthful April shall with all his showers; in summer’s drought I’ll drop upon thee still.

O form! how oft dost thou with thy case, thy habit, wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls to thy false seeming!

O Fortune, Fortune! all men call thee fickle.

O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

O heaven! that one might read the book of fate, and see the revolution of the times.

O heaven, that such companions thou ’ldst unfold, and put in every honest hand a whip to lash the rascals naked through the world.

O Lord, that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.

O melancholy, who ever yet could sound thy bottom?

O mighty Cæsar! dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, shrunk to this little measure?

O most lame and impotent conclusion!

O nation miserable, with an untitled tyrant bloody-sceptered, when shalt thou see thy wholesome days again?

O opportunity, thy guilt is great!

O place! O form, how often dost thou with thy case, thy habit, wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls to thy false seeming!

O shame! where is thy blush?

O sir, you are old; nature in you stands on the very verge of her confine; you should be ruled and led by some discretion, that discerns your fate better than you yourself.

O that estates, degrees, and offices were not derived corruptly! and that clear honor were purchased by the merit of the wearer!

O that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!

O that men’s ears should be to counsel deaf, but not to flattery!

O that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves!

O the world is but a word; were it all yours to give it in a breath, how quickly were it gone!

O theft most base, that we have stolen what we do fear to keep!

O this learning, what a thing it is!

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

O thou monster ignorance!

O thou that dost inhabit in my breast, leave not the mansion so long tenantless; lest, growing ruinous, the building fall and leave no memory of what it was!

O thoughts of men accurst! Past and to come seems best; things present, worst.

O villainous! I have looked upon the world for four times seven years; and since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, I never found man that knew how to love himself.

O villains, vipers, dogs, easily won to fawn on any man!

O what a world of vile ill-favored faults looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!

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

O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O limed soul that, struggling to be free, art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay! Bow, stubborn knees! and, heart with strings of steel, be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!

O! she will sing the savageness out of a bear.

O’ercanopied with luscious woodbine, with sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine.

O, be sick, great greatness, and bid thy ceremony give thee cure! Thinkest thou the fiery fever will go out with titles blown from adulation?

O, call back yesterday, bid time return.

O, grief hath changed me since you saw me last; and careful hours, with Time’s deformed hand, have written strange defeatures in my face!

O, how full of briars is this working-day world!

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, by that sweet ornament which truth doth give!

O, how this spring of love resembleth the uncertain glory of an April day!

O, it came over my ear like the sweet south, that breathes upon a bank of violets, stealing and giving odor!

O, it comes over my memory, as doth the raven over the infected house, boding to all.

O, let not woman’s weapons, waterdrops, stain my man’s cheeks!

O, polished perturbation! golden care that keepest the ports of slumber open wide to many a watchful night!

O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon.

O, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!

O, that way madness lies; let me shun that.

O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature’s journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful in the contempt and anger of his lip!

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

O, what authority and show of truth can cunning sin cover itself withal!

O, what damned minutes tells he o’er, who dotes, yet doubts; suspects, yet strongly loves!

O, while you live, tell truth, and shame the devil.

Oaths are straws, men’s faiths are wafer-cakes, and hold-fast is the only dog.

Obey thy parents, keep thy word justly; swear not; commit not with man’s sworn spouse; set not thy sweet heart on proud array.***Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy pen from lenders’ books.

Observe degree, priority, and place.

Of all base passions fear is most accurs’d.

Of chastity, the ornaments are chaste.

Off goes his bonnet to an oyster wench.

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where it most promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest, and despair most sits.

Oft my jealousy shapes faults that are not.

Oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse; as patches, set upon a little breach, discredit more in hiding of the fault than did the fault before it was so patched.

Oh for a muse of fire that would ascend the highest heaven of invention!

Oh, flatter me; for love delights in praises.

Oh, give me thy hand, one writ with me in sour misfortune’s book!

Oh, happy vantage of a kneeling knee!

Oh, he is as tedious as a tired horse!

Oh, I am stabbed with laughter!

Oh, I have passed a miserable night, so full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams!

Oh, mickle is the powerful grace that lies in plants, herbs, stones and their qualities!

Oh, my offence is rank; it smells to heaven.

Oh, never will I trust to speeches penned!***taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, three-piled hyperboles.

Oh, she will sing the savageness out of a bear.

Oh, that deceit should dwell in such a gorgeous palace!

Oh, that deceit should steal such gentle shapes, and with a virtuous vizard hide foul guile!

Oh, that estates, degrees, and offices were not derived corruptly, and that clear honor were purchased by the merit of the wearer!

Oh, what may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

Old father antic the law.

Old Time, the clock setter, that bald sexton, Time.

Oli.—What’s a drunken man like, fool?
Clo.—Like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman; one draught above heat makes him a fool, the second made him, and a third drowns him.

On Rumor’s tongue continual slanders ride.

Once again I do receive thee honest. Who by repentance is not satisfied is nor of heaven nor earth.

One good deed dying tongueless slaughters a thousand waiting upon that. Our praises are our wages.

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

One sin another doth provoke.

One that, above all other strifes, contended especially to know himself.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

One whom the music of his own vain tongue doth ravish like enchanting harmony.

One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, so fast they follow.

One woman is fair; yet I am well: another is wise; yet I am well: another virtuous; yet I am well. But till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.

Opinion crowns with an imperial voice.

Opinion, a sovereign mistress of effects.

Oppose not rage while rage is in its force, but give it way awhile and let it waste.

Order gave each thing view.

Our content is our best having.

Our enemies are our outward consciences.

Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, more longing, wavering, sooner lost and won, than women’s are.

Our foster-nurse of nature is repose.

Our Jovial star reign’d at his birth.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to Heaven.

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

Our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.

Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.

Pain pays the income of each precious thing.

Pardon, gentles all, the flat unraised spirits that have dared on this unworthy scaffold to bring forth so great an object.

Passing through Nature to eternity.

Passion makes the will lord of the reason.

Past all shame, so past all truth.

Pastime passing excellent, if it be husbanded with modesty.

Patch grief with proverbs.

Peace, dear nurse of arts, plenties and joyful births.

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.

Pitchers have ears.

Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.

Plenty and peace breed cowards; hardness ever of hardiness is mother.

Poor and content is rich, and rich enough; but riches, fineless, is as poor as winter to him that ever fears he shall be poor.

Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are, that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, how shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you from seasons such as these?

Poor rogues, and usurers’ men! bawds between gold and want!

Preferment goes by letter and affection.

Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.

Pride hath no other glass to show itself but pride.

Promising is the very air of the time; it opens the eyes of expectation; performance is ever the duller for his act; and, but in the plainer and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying is quite out of use. To promise is most courtly and fashionable; performance is a kind of will, or testament, which argues a great sickness in his judgment that makes it.

Proper deformity seems not in the fiend so horrid as in woman.

Prosperity is the very bond of love.

Quiet days, fair issue, and long life.

Rather see the wonders of the world abroad, than, living dully sluggardized at home, wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.

Read not my blemishes in the world’s report.

Religious canons, civil laws, are cruel; then what should war be?

Repentance is heart sorrow, and a clear life ensuing.

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

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

Rich honesty dwells like a miser, in a poor house, as your pearl in your foul oyster.

Rightly to be great is not to stir without great argument.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.

Ruminates like an hostess that hath no arithmetic but her brain to set down her reckoning.

Rumor 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.

Sad, unhelpful tears.

Saint-seducing gold.

Scarce can I speak, my choler is so great. Oh! I could hew up rocks, and fight with flint.

Scorn at first, makes after-love the more.

Season your admiration for awhile.

Security is mortal’s chiefest enemy.

See what a ready tongue suspicion hath!

Seest thou not, I say, what a deformed thief this fashion is, how giddily he turns about all the hot bloods between fourteen and five-and-thirty?

Self-harming jealousy.

Self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.

Self-love is the most inhibited sin in the canon.

Sermons in stones and good in every thing.

Shall I lay perjury upon my soul? No, not for Venice!

Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?

She bears a duke’s revenues on her back.

She is a woman, therefore may be wooed; she is a woman, therefore may be won.

She speaks poniards, and every word stabs.

Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass, that I may see my shadow as I pass.

Short time seems long in sorrow’s sharp sustaining; though woe be heavy, yet it seldom sleeps, and they who watch see time how slow it creeps.

Should all despair that have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind would hang themselves.

Should the poor be flattered? No; let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, and crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning.

Sick in the world’s regard, wretched and low.

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy if I could say how much.

Sin will pluck on sin.

Sin, that amends, is but patched with virtue.

Since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes—I will be brief.

Sir, you are very welcome to our house; it must appear in other ways than words, therefore I scant this breathing courtesy.

Sir, your wit ambles well; it goes easily.

Sit down and feed, and welcome to our table.

Sky-aspiring and ambitious thoughts.

Slander lives upon succession, forever housed where it gets possession.

Slander, whose whisper over the world’s diameter, as level as the cannon to its blank, transports his poisoned shot.

Sleep, gentle sleep, nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, that thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, and steep my senses in forgetfulness?

Sleep, that knits up the raveled sleave of care, the death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast.

Sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow’s eye.

Slips of yew, silvered in the moon’s eclipse.

Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.

Small herbs have grace; great weeds do grow apace.

Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.

So light a foot will ne’er wear out the everlasting flint.

So wise, so young, they say, do never live long.

So work the honey-bees—creatures that, by a rule in nature, teach the art of order to a peopled kingdom.

Society is no comfort to one not sociable.

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

Some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone.

Some must watch while some must sleep, so runs the world away.

Some sins do bear their privilege on earth.

Some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltness of time.

Some there be that shadows kiss; such have but a shadow’s bliss.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Sometimes from her eyes I did receive fair speechless messages.

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.

Sorrow ends not when it seemeth done.

Sorrow, like a heavy hanging bell, once set on ringing, with his own weight goes; then little strength rings out the doleful knell.

Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

Speaks three or four languages word for word without a book.

Splitting the air with noise.

Stabbed with a white wench’s black eye.

Stands Scotland where it did?

Stealing her soul with many vows of faith, and ne’er a true one.

Steep’d me in poverty to the very lips.

Still as the peaceful walks of ancient night; silent as are the lamps that burn on tombs.

Still harping on my daughter.

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace.

Stones have been known to move and trees to speak.

Strike, brave boys, and take your turns.

Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.

Strong reasons make strong actions.

Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.

Such a nature, tickled with good success, disdains the shadow which he treads on at noon.

Such a noise arose as the shrouds make at sea in a stiff tempest, as loud and to as many tunes,—hats, cloaks, doublets, I think, flew up; and had their faces been loose, this day they had been lost.

Such an act, that blurs the grace and blush of modesty, calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose from the fair forehead of an innocent love, and sets a blister there.

Such men as he be never at heart’s ease whiles they behold a greater than themselves.

Such war of white and red within her cheeks.

Sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature.

Summer’s parching heat.

Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; the thief still fears each bush an officer.

Suspicion shall be all stuck full of eyes.

Sweet flowers are slow, and weeds make haste.

Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.

Sweet recreation barred, what doth ensue but moody and dull melancholy, kinsman to grim and comfortless despair; and at their heels, a huge infectious troop of pale distemperatures and foes to life.

Sweets to the sweet; farewell!

Sweets with sweets war not; joy delights in joy.

Take all the swift advantage of the hour.

Talk logic with acquaintances, and practise rhetoric in your common talk.

Talkers are no good doers.

Teach not thy lip such scorn; for it was made for kissing, lady, not for such contempt.

Tears harden lust, though marble wear with raining.

Tell him there’s a post come from my master, with his horn full of good news.

Than dost conspire against thy friend, Iago, if thou but think’st him wronged, and mak’st his ear a stranger to thy thoughts.

Thanks, the exchequer of the poor.

That blind, rascally boy that abuses every one’s eyes, because his own are out.

That hook of wiving, fairness which strikes the eye.

That is, when a man is, as they say, accommodated: or where a man is—being—whereby—he may be thought to be accommodated, which is an excellent thing.

That man that has a tongue, I say, is no man if with his tongue he cannot win a woman.

That orbed continent, the fire that severs day from night.

That same dew, which sometime on the buds was wont to swell, like round and orient pearls, stood now within the pretty flowerets’ eyes, like tears that did their own disgrace bewail.

That strumpet—Fortune.

That which ordinary men are fit for, I am qualified in; and the best of me is diligence.

That word “grace” in an ungracious mouth is but profane.

That’s a valiant flea that dares eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.

The air of paradise did fan the house, and angels officed all.

The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie.

The appurtenance of welcome is fashion and ceremony.

The April’s in her eyes; it is love’s spring, and these the showers to bring it on.

The babbling gossip of the air.

The benediction of these covering heavens fall on their heads like dew.

The best quarrels, in the heat, are cursed by those that feel their sharpness.

The best way is to slander Valentine with falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent,—three things that women highly hold in hate.

The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life.

The bitter clamour of two eager tongues.

The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.

The blind cave of eternal night.

The blind monster with uncounted heads, the still discordant, wavering multitude.

The blood of youth burns not with such excess as gravity’s revolt to wantonness.

The brain may devise laws for the blood; but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree: such a hare is madness, the youth, to skip o’er the meshes of good counsel, the cripple.

The cannons have their bowels full of wrath; and ready mounted are they to spit forth their iron indignation against your walls.

The chariest maid is prodigal enough if she unmask her beauty to the moon.

The clock upbraids me with the waste of time.

The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn, doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat wake the god of day.

The common curse of mankind, folly and ignorance.

The crickets sing, and man’s overlabored sense repairs itself by rest.

The cripple, tardy-gaited night, who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp so tediously away.

The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek.

The devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape.

The devil knew what he did when he made men politic; he crossed himself by it.

The devil shall have his bargain; for he was never yet a breaker of proverbs—he will give the devil his due.

The dread of something after death, that undiscovered country, from whose bourne no traveller returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear the ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of.

The due of honor in no point omit.

The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, and these are of them.

The earth, that’s nature’s mother, is her tomb.

The elegancy, facility and golden cadence of poesy.

The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy; his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure.

The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.

The end crowns all; and that old common arbitrator, Time, will one day end it.

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.

The eye of day hath oped its lids.

The eyes of women are Promethean fires.

The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.

The first Retort Courteous; the second the Quip Modest; the third the Reply Churlish; the fourth the Reproof Valiant; the fifth the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh the Lie Direct.

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.

The flighty purpose never is o’ertook unless the deed go with it.

The fool doth think he is wise.

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel.

The game is up.

The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful day is crept into the bosom of the sea.

The gentleness of all the gods go with thee.

The glorious sun stays in his course, and plays the alchemist, turning with splendor of his precious eye the meagre cloddy earth to glittering gold.

The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows; they are polluted offerings, more abhorred than spotted livers in the sacrifice.

The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light.

The grief that does not speak whispers the overfraught heart and bids it break.

The guilt being great, the fear doth still exceed.

The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.

The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good. The goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief in goodness; but grace, being the soul of your complexion, should keep the body of it ever fair.

The harder matched, the greater victory.

The heart’s attorney.

The heart’s meteors tilting in the face.

The hearts of all his people shall revolt from him, and kiss the lips of unacquainted change.

The honor of a maid is her name.

The houses that he makes last till doomsday.

The icy precepts of respect.

The inaudible and noiseless foot of time.

The instances, that second marriage move, are base respects of thrift, but none of love.

The king is but a man, as I am; the violet smells to him as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doth to me; all his senses have but human conditions; his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing.

The king’s name is a tower of strength.

The king-becoming graces—devotion, patience, courage, fortitude.

The labor we delight in physics pain.

The letter is too long by half a mile.

The light wife doth make a heavy husband.

The love of heaven makes one heavenly.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact.

The man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man, if with his tongue he cannot win a woman.

The man was noble, but with his last attempt he wiped it out, destroyed his country; and his name remains to the ensuing age abhorred.

The means that heaven yields must be embraced, and not neglected; else, if heaven would, and we will not heaven’s offer, we refuse the proffered means of succor and redress.

The mind of guilt is full of scorpions.

The moon, like to a silver bow new bent in heaven.

The moon, the governess of floods, pale in her anger, washes all the air, that rheumatic diseases do abound; and, through this distemperature, we see the seasons alter.

The more pity that great folk should have countenance in this world to drown or hang themselves, more than their even Christian.

The most patient man in loss, the most coldest that ever turned up ace.

The native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.

The nature of bad news affects the teller.

The night is long that never finds the day.

The nightingale, if he should sing by day, when every goose is cackling, would be thought no better a musician than the wren. How many things by season seasoned are to their right praise and true perfection!

The part was aptly fitted and naturally performed.

The plants look up to heaven, from whence they have their nourishment.

The pleasantest angling is to see the fish cut with her golden oars the silver stream, and greedily devour the treacherous bait.

The poor wren, the most diminutive of birds, will fight, her young ones in her nest, against the owl.

The poorest service is repaid with thanks.

The present eye praises the present object.

The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance.

The reconciling grave swallows distinction first, that made us foes, that all alike lie down in peace together.

The red rose on triumphant brier.

The ripest fruit first falls.

The robbed that smiles steals something from the thief.

The seasons alter; hoary-headed frosts fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose.

The sense of death is most in apprehension.

The short and the long of it.

The silver livery of advised age.

The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on.

The soul of this man is in his clothes.

The spring, the summer, the chill autumn, angry winter, change their wonted liveries.

The stars above govern our condition.

The sun is in the heaven; and the proud day, attended with the pleasures of the world, is all too wanton.

The sun with one eye vieweth all the world.

***the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.

The swallowing gulf of dark forgetfulness and deep oblivion.

The tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow.

The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, bearing the wanton burden of the prime.

The time is out of joint.

The tongues of dying men enforce attention, like deep harmony.

The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen as is the razor’s edge invisible.

The trees by the way should have borne men, and expectation fainted, longing for what it had not.

The unfolding star calls up the shepherd.

The very coinage of your brain.

The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

The violence of either grief or joy, their own enactures with themselves destroy.

The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven’s lieutenants.

The weakest goes to the wall.

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.

The weary sun hath made a golden set, and by the bright track of his fiery car, gives signal of a goodly day to-morrow.

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.

The whining schoolboy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school.

The whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

The white wonder of Juliet’s hands.

The will of man is by his reason sway’d.

The wise man knows himself to be a fool.

The word is short, but not so short as sweet.

The world is still deceived by ornament.

The wound of peace is surety, surety secure; but modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise; the tent that searches to the bottom of the worst.

The wounds invisible that Love’s keen arrows make.

Then kissed me hard, as if he plucked up kisses by the roots, that grew upon my lips.

Then was I as a tree whose boughs did bend with fruit; but in one night, a storm or robbery, call it what you will, shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves, and left me bare to weather.

There appears much joy in him, even so much that joy could not show itself modest enough without a badge of bitterness. A kind overflow of kindness,—there are no faces truer than those that are so washed.

There are few die well that die in a battle.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

There are no tricks in plain simple faith.

There can be no kernel in this light nut; the soul of this man is in his clothes.

There I’ll rest, as after much turmoil a blessed soul doth in Elysium.

There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.

There is a history in all men’s lives.

There is flattery in friendship.

There is many a man hath more hair than wit.

There is no art whereby to find the mind’s construction in the face.

There is no better sign of a brave mind than a hard hand.

There is no darkness but ignorance.

There is no fettering of authority.

There is no love-broker in the world can more prevail in man’s commendation with woman than report of valor.

There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail.

There is no such sport as sport by sport o’erthrown.

There is no terror in your threats; for I am armed so strong in honesty that they pass by me as the idle wind which I respect not.

There is no time so miserable but a man may be true.

There is no vice so simple, but assumes some mark of virtue on its outward parts.

There is no virtue like necessity.

There is none but he whose being I do fear; and, under him, my genius is rebuked, as it is said Antony’s was by Cæsar.

There is nothing but roguery to be found in villanous men.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things.

There is some soul of goodness in things evil, would men observingly distil it out.

There is thy gold; worse poison to men’s souls.

There shall be, in England, seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny; the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer.

There should be hours for necessities, not for delights; times to repair our nature with comforting repose, and not for us to waste these times.

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

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.

There was speech in their dumbness, language in their very gesture.

There’s a skirmish of wit between them.

There’s a small choice in rotten apples.

There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

There’s a time for all things.

There’s neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee.

There’s no trust, no faith, no honesty, in men; all perjured, all forsworn, all nought, all dissemblers.

There’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple.

There’s place and means for every man alive.

There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance;***and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.

There’s some ill planet reigns; I moist be patient till the heavens look with an aspect favorable.

There’s such divinity doth hedge a king.

Therefore doth heaven divide the state of man in divers functions, setting endeavor in continual motion.

Thersites’s body is as good as Ajax’s neither are alive.

These are old fond paradoxes to make fools laugh i’ the alehouse.

These blessed candles of the night.

These exactions whereof my sovereign would have note, they are most pestilent to the hearing; and, to bear ’em, the back is sacrifice to the load.

These lies are like the father that begets them; gross as a mountain, open, palpable.

These should be hours for necessities, not for delights; times to repair our nature with comforting repose, and not for us to waste these times.

These words are razors to my wounded heart.

They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.

They are not constant, but are changing still.

They are sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.

They are the abstracts, and brief chronicles of the time.

They are the books, the arts, the academies, that show, contain, and nourish all the world.

They do not love, that do not show their love.

They have a plentiful lack of wit.

They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps. They have lived long in the alms-basket of words!

They laugh that win.

They say, an old man is twice a child.

They say, best men are moulded out of faults, and, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad!

They say, poor suitors have strong breaths.

They shall have wars and pay for their presumption.

They that have voice of lions and act of hares,—are they not monsters?

They that stand high have many blasts to shake them; and if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces.

They that touch pitch will be defiled.

They whose guilt within their bosoms lie imagine every eye beholds their blame.

They, judgment and reason, have been grandjurymen since before Noah was a sailor.

Thieves for their robbery have authority, when judges steal themselves,

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

Things at the worst will cease, or else climb upward to what they were before.

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.

Things may serve long, but not serve ever.

Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.

Things without remedy should be without regard; what is done is done.

Think on thy sins.

Think you a little din can daunt mine ears? Have I not in my time heard lions roar?***Have I not heard great ordnance in the field, and heaven’s artillery thunder in the skies?***And do you tell me of a woman’s tongue, that gives not half so great a blow to hear as will a chestnut in a farmer’s fire?

Think’st thou I’ll endanger my soul gratis?

This avarice sticks deeper; grows with more pernicious root than summer-seeding lust.

This bodes some strange eruption to our state.

This day shall change all griefs and quarrels into love.

This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease; he is wit’s peddler.

This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory.

This heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws or ere I’ll weep.

This is an art which does mend nature,—change it rather; but the art itself is nature.

This is your devoted friend, sir, the manifold linguist.

This majestical roof, fretted with golden fire.

This muddy vesture of decay.

This was the most unkindest cut of all.

This word, “rebellion,” it had froze them up, as fish are in a pond.

Those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air.

Those happy smilets that played on her ripe lip seemed not to know what guests were in her eyes; which parted thence as pearls from diamonds dropped.

Those men who destroy a healthful constitution of body by intemperance and an irregular life do as manifestly kill themselves as those who hang or poison or drown themselves.

Those mouth-made vows, which break themselves in swearing.

Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court.

Thou art a strange fellow: a tailor make a man? Ay, a tailor, sir; a stone-cutter or a painter could not have made him so ill, though he had been but two hours at the trade.

Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine.

Thou art sworn as deeply to affect what we intend as closely to conceal what we impart.

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.

Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar?***And the creature run from the cur? There thou might’st behold the great image of authority: a dog’s obeyed in office.

Thou nursest all, and murderest all, that are.

Thou tell’st me there is murder in my eye: ’tis pretty, sure, and very probable that eyes—that are the frailest and softest things, who shut their coward gates on atomies—should be called tyrants, butchers, murderers!

Thou wrong’st a gentleman who is as far from thy report as thou from honor.

Thou! why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair more, or a hair less, in his beard than thou hast. Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes.

Though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft led by the nose with gold.

Though death be poor, it ends a mortal woe.

Though Fortune’s malice overthrow my state, my mind exceeds the compass of her wheel.

Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty, for in my youth I never did apply hot and rebellious liquors in my blood.

Though justice be thy plea, consider this, that in the course of justice none of us should see salvation. We do pray for mercy; and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.

Though love use reason for its precision, he admits him not for his councillor.

Though men can cover crimes with bold, stern looks, poor women’s faces are their own faults’ books.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.

Though those that are betrayed do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor stands in worse case of woe.

Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick, yet, with my nobler reason, against my fury do I take part; the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance.

Thought is free.

Thought is the slave of life, and life time’s fool; and time, that takes survey of all the world, must have a stop.

Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried.

Thoughts are winged.

Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, and the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; arm it in rags, a pygmy’s straw doth pierce it.

Throw physic to the dogs, I’ll none of it.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.

Thus I clothe my naked villany with old odd ends, stolen out of holy writ; and seem a saint when most I play the devil.

Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

Thy eternal summer shall not fade.

Thy head is as full of quarrels as an egg is full of meat.

Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought.

Thy wit is a very bitter sweeting; it is a most sharp sauce.

Thy wit is as quick as the greyhound’s mouth—it catches.

’T is a physic that is bitter to sweet end.

’T is modesty that makes them seem divine.

’T is too much proved that with devotion’s visage and pious action we do sugar o’er the devil himself.

’Tis a monster begot upon itself, born on itself.

’Tis but a base ignoble mind that mounts no higher than a bird can soar.

’Tis deeds must win the prize.

’Tis government that makes them seem divine.

’Tis neither here nor there.

’Tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation.

’Tis the best brine a maiden can season her praise in.

’Tis time to fear, when tyrants seem to kiss.

Till all grace be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth, and delves the parallels in beauty’s brow.

Time goes on crutches till love have all his rites.

Time is the king of men; he is both their parent, and he is their grave, and gives them what he will, not what they crave.

Time is the nurser and breeder of all good.

Time travels in divers paces with divers persons.

Time yet serves, wherein you may redeem your tarnished honors, and restore yourselves into the good thoughts of the world again.

Time, whose millioned accidents creep in betwixt vows, and change decrees of kings, tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharpest intents, divert strong minds to the course of altering things.

To be a well-favored man is the gift of fortune; but to read and write comes by nature.

To be generous, guiltless, and of a free disposition is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets.

To be honest as this world goes is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

To be in anger is impiety, but who is man that is not angry?

To be once in doubt is once to be resolved.

To beguile many and be beguil’d by one.

To build upon a foolish woman’s promise!

To business that we love we rise betime, and go to ’t with delight.

To fear the worst, oft cures the worst.

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.

To hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature.

To lapse in fulness is sorer than to lie for need; and falsehood is worse in kings than beggars.

To leave this keen encounter of our wits, and fall somewhat into a slower method.

To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof little more than a little is by much too much.

To make a virtue of necessity.

To revenge is no valor, but to bear.

To say you are welcome were superfluous.

To show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and presence.

To some kind of men their graces serve them but as enemies.

To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences.

To that dauntless temper of his mind he hath a wisdom that doth guide his valor to act in safety.

To what base uses may we return! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till it find it stopping a bunghole? As thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth: of earth we make loam. And why of that loam, whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer barrel?

To whom God will, there be the victory!

To wilful men the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.

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.

Too much of a good thing.

Too much sadness hath congealed your blood.

Traffic’s thy god; and thy god confound thee!

Travelers must be content.

Travelers never did lie, though fools at home condemn them.

Treason and murder ever kept together, as two yolk-devils sworn to either’s purpose.

Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ.

Trust not him that hath once broken faith.

Trust not those cunning waters of his eyes, for villainy is not without such rheum.

Truth hath a quiet breast.

Truth is truth to the end of reckoning.

Truth needs no color; beauty, no pencil.

Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they’ll fill a pit as well as better.

Two may keep counsel putting one away!

Two may keep counsel when the third’s away.

Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere.

Unblown flowers, new-appearing sweets.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Unquiet meals make ill digestion.

Unthread the rude eye of rebellion.

Upon such sacrifices the gods themselves throw incense.

Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience.

Upon thy cheek lay I this zealous kiss, as seal to the indenture of my love.

Urge them while their souls are capable of this ambition, lest zeal, now melted by the windy breath of soft petitions, pity and remorse, cool and congeal again to what it was.

Use almost can change the stamp of nature.

Use every man after his desert, and who should escape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity; the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.

Vanity keeps persons in favor with themselves who are out of favor with all others.

Vaulting ambition, which overleaps itself.

Venus smiles not in a house of tears.

Verily, I swear, it is better to be lowly born, and range with humble livers in content, than to be perked up in a glistering grief, and wear a golden sorrow.

Vice repeated is like the wandering wind, blows dust in others’ eyes to spread itself.

Violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die; like fire and powder, which as they kiss consume.

Virtue is beauty.

Virtue is bold and goodness never fearful.

Virtue is chok’d with foul ambition.

Virtue itself escapes not calumnious strokes.

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, and vice sometimes by action dignified.

Virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin that amends is but patched with virtue.

Virtue’s office never breaks men’s troth.

Wait for the season when to cast good counsels upon subsiding passion.

War ’twixt you twain would be as if the world should cleave, and that slain men should solder up the rift.

Was ever feather so lightly blown to and fro as this multitude.

Watch thou, and wake when others be asleep, to pry into the secrets of the state.

We bring forth weeds when our quick minds lie still.

We defy augury; there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. 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.

We do pray for mercy; and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.

We have scotch’d the snake, not killed it.

We have seen better days.

We have some salt of our youth in us.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

We may outrun by violent swiftness that which we run at, and lose by overrunning.

We must be brief when traitors brave the field.

We must be gentle now we are gentlemen.

We must be neat; not neat, but cleanly.

We must be patient; but I cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him i’ the cold ground.

We must follow, not force Providence.

We must love men, ere to us they will seem worthy of our love.

We must not rend our subjects from our laws, and stick them in our will. Sixth part of each? A trembling contribution! Why, we take from every tree lop, bark, and part o’ the timber; and though we leave it with a root thus hacked, the air will drink the sap.

We must not stint our necessary actions in the fear to cope malicious censurers.

We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.

We must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

We wound our modesty, and make foul the clearness of our deservings, when of ourselves we publish them.

We’ll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there’s no labouring i’ the winter.

We’re not ourselves when Nature, being oppressed, commands the mind to suffer with the body.

We, ignorant of ourselves, beg often our own harm, which the wise powers deny us for our good; so find we profit by losing of our prayers.

Weariness can snore upon the flint, when restive sloth finds the down pillow hard.

Weed your better judgments of all opinion that grows rank in them.

Weep not, sweet queen, for trickling tears are vain.

Well, ’tis no matter; honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off, when I come on? how then? Can honor set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no: Honor hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honor? a word. What is in that word honor? What is that honor? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no. ’Tis insensible, then. Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore, I’ll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon; and so ends my catechism.

Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents.

Well, I’ll repent, and that suddenly, while I am in some liking; I shall be out of heart shortly, and then I shall have no strength to repent.

Well, if my wind were but long enough to say my prayers, I would repent.

Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.

Well, Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let Time try.

Well-apparelled April on the heel of limping winter treads.

Were man but constant, he were perfect.

What a beard hast thou got! thou hast got more hair on thy chin than Dobbin my fill-horse has on his tail.

What a piece of work is 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!

What a spendthrift he is of his tongue!

What an eye she has! methinks it sounds a parley of provocation.

What fate imposes, men must needs abide; it boots not to resist both wind and tide.

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.

What is aught but as ’tis valued?

What is more miserable than discontent?

What is the matter, that this distempered messenger of wet, the many-colored Iris, rounds thine eye?

What my tongue dares not that my heart shall say.

What rein can hold licentious wickedness, when down the hill he holds his fierce career?

What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?

What subtle hole is this?

What thou wilt, thou rather shalt enforce it with thy smile, than hew to it with thy sword.

What valor were it, when a cur doth grin, for one to thrust his hand between his teeth, when he might spurn him with his foot away?

What! canst thou say all this and never blush?

What! have I ’scaped love-letters in the holiday-time of my beauty, and am I now a subject for them?

What! wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice?

What’s a drunken man like?—Like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman: one draught above heat makes him a fool; the second mads him, and a third drowns him.

What’s brave, what’s noble, let’s do it after the high Roman fashion, and make death proud to take us.

What’s gone and what’s past help should be past grief.

What’s the newest grief? Each minute tunes a new one.

What, man! defy the devil? Consider, he’s an enemy to mankind.

When a gentleman is disposed to swear it is not for any standers-by to curtail his oaths.

When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again.

When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks.

When devils will the blackest sins put on, they do suggest at first with heavenly shows.

When great leaves fall, the winter is at hand.

When he is best, he is little worse than a man; and when he is worst he is little better than a beast.

When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.

When I was at home, I was in a better place; but travelers must be content.

When impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.

When love begins to sicken and decay it useth an enforced ceremony.

When old Time shall lead him to his end, goodness and he fill up one monument.

When remedies are past, the griefs are ended.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

When the age is in, the wit is out.

When the fox hath once got in his nose, he’ll soon find means to make the body follow.

When the moon shone, we did not see the candle, so doth the greater glory dim the less; a substitute shines brightly as a king, until a king be by; and then his state empties itself, as doth an inland brook into the main of waters.

When the splitting wind makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks.

When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?

When we our betters see bearing our woes, we scarcely think our miseries our foes.

When well-apparelled April on the heel of limping winter treads.

When workmen strive to do better than well, they do confound their skill in covetousness.

Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?

Where doth the world thrust forth a vanity (so it be new, there is no respect how vile) that is not quickly buzzed into the ears?

Where is any author in the world teaches such beauty as a woman’s eye?

Where nothing wants that want itself doth seek.

Where the offence is, let the great axe fall.

Which to believe of her must be a faith that reason without miracle shall never plant in me.

Whilst thou livest keep a good tongue in thy head.

White, cold, virgin snow.

Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back.

Whither are they vanished? Into the air; and what seemed corporal melted, as breath into the wind.

Who can cloy the hungry edge of appetite?

Who can speak broader than he that has no house to put his head in?—Such may rail against great buildings.

Who cries out on pride that can therein tax any private party? Doth it not flow as hugely as the sea?

Who has a heart so pure but some uncleanly apprehensions keep leets and law-days, and in session sit with meditations lawful?

Who is it can read a woman?

Who makes the fairest show means most deceit.

Who rises from a feast with that keen appetite that he sits down?

Who shall be true to us, when we are so unsecret to ourselves?

Who soars too near the sun, with golden wings, melts them.

Whose own hard dealings teaches them suspect the thoughts of others!

Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain which with pain purchased doth inherit pain.

Why, man, if the river were dry, I am able to fill it with my tears: if the wind were down, I could drive the boat with my sighs.

Why, then the world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open.

Why, this is very midsummer madness.

Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin’s fee; and, for my soul, what can it do to that, being a thing immortal.

Will is deaf, and hears no heedful friends.

Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep.

Windows, white and azure-laced with blue of heaven’s own tinct.

Winking Maybuds begin to ope their golden eyes.

Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile.

Wise men ne’er sit and wail their woes, but presently prevent the ways to wail.

Wisely weigh our sorrow with our comfort.

Wisely, and slow; they stumble that run fast.

Wish chastely, and love dearly.

Wit larded with malice.

With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder.

With his eyes in flood with laughter.

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.

With silence, nephew, be thou politic.

With the losers let it sympathize; for nothing can seem foul to those that win.

With this kiss take my blessing. God protect thee!

Within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king, keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits, scoffing his state.

Wolves and bears, they say, casting their savagery aside, have done like offices of pity.

Words are grown so false, I am loath to prove reason with them.

Words pay no debts, give her deeds.

Words sweetly placed and modestly directed.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

Would it not grieve a woman to be over-mastered by a piece of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marle?

Yet he’s gentle, never schooled and yet learned.

Yon gray lines that fret the clouds are messengers of day.

Yon towers, whose wanton tops do buss the clouds.

You are my true and honorable wife, as dear to me as the ruddy drops that visit my sad heart.

You cram these words into mine ears, against the stomach of my sense.

You gave with them words of so sweet breath composed, as made the things more rich.

You have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser.

You may as well say that’s a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.

You may relish him more in the soldier than in the scholar.

You may ride us with one soft kiss a thousand furlongs, ere with spur we heat an acre.

You must confine yourself within the modest limits of order.

You shall never take her without her answer, unless you take her without her tongue.

Your children were vexation to your youth.

Your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek.

Your gentleness shall force, more than your force move us to gentleness.

Your play needs no excuse.

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.

Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD