The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

The wren goes to’t, and the small gilded fly Does lecher in my sight.

Let copulation thrive.

‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 4, sc. 6, l. [110]

Lear: The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to’t With a more riotous appetite.

Down from the waist they are Centaurs, Though women all above:

But to the girdle do the Gods inherit, Beneath is all the fiends’:

There’s hell, there’s darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, Burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!

Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination; there’s money for thee.

Gloucester: O! let me kiss that hand!

Lear: Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality. Gloucester: O ruined piece of nature! This great world Should so wear out to nought.

‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 4, sc. 6, l. [125]

A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?

‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 4, sc. 6, l. [154]

Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!

Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind

For which thou whipp’st her.

‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 4, sc. 6, l. [165]

Plate sin with gold,

And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw doth pierce it.

‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 4, sc. 6, l. [170]

Get thee glass eyes;

And, like a scurvy politician, seem To see the things thou dost not.

‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 4, sc. 6, l. [175]

I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloucester: Thou must be patient; we came crying hither: Thou know’st the first time that we smell the air We waul and cry.

The wheel is come full circle.

‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 5, sc. 3, l. [176]

His flawed heart,—

Alack! too weak the conflict to support; ’Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, Burst smilingly.

‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 5, sc. 3, l. [198]

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O! you are men of stones: Had I your tongue and eyes, I’d use them so

That heaven’s vaults should crack. She’s gone for ever!

‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 5, sc. 3, l. [259]

Kent: Is this the promised end? Edgar: Or image of that horror? Albion: Fall and cease?

‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 5, sc. 3, l. [265]

Her voice was ever soft,

Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.

‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 5, sc. 3, l. [274]

And my poor fool is hanged! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,

And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more, Never, never, never, never, never!

Pray you, undo this button.

‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 5, sc. 3, l. [307]

Vex not his ghost: O! let him pass; he hates him That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer.

‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 5, sc. 3, l. [314]

The weight of this sad time we must obey, Speak what we feel; not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young, Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 5, sc. 3, l. [325]

7.66.18 Love’s Labour’s Lost

Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live registered upon our brazen tombs, And then grace us in the disgrace of death; When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,

The endeavour of this present breath may buy

That honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge, And make us heirs of all eternity.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 1, sc. 1, l. 1

Study is like the heaven’s glorious sun,

That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks; Small have continual plodders ever won,

Save base authority from others’ books. These earthly godfathers of Heaven’s lights That give a name to every fixéd star,

Have no more profit of their shining nights Than those that walk and wot not what they are.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 1, sc. 1, l. 84

At Christmas I no more desire a rose

Than wish a snow in May’s new-fangled mirth; But like of each thing that in season grows.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 1, sc. 1, l. 105

Assist me some extemporal god of rime, for I am sure I shall turn sonneter. Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 1, sc. 2, l. [192]

Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye,

Not utter’d by base sale of chapmen’s tongues.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 2, sc. 1, l. 15

A merrier man,

Within the limit of becoming mirth, I never spent an hour’s talk withal.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 2, sc. 1, l. 66

Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 2, sc. 1, l. [114]

Your wit’s too hot, it speeds too fast, ’twill tire.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 2, sc. 1, l. [119]

Warble, child; make passionate my sense of hearing.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 3, sc. 1, l. 1

This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy, 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 malecontents,

Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces, Sole imperator and great general

Of trotting ’paritors: O my little heart!

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 3, sc. 1, l. [189]

A wightly wanton with a velvet brow,

With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes; Ay, and, by heaven, one that will do the deed Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard: And I to sigh for her! to watch for her!

To pray for her!

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 3, sc. 1, l. [206]

He hath not fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 4, sc. 2, l. [25]

Old Mantuan! old Mantuan! Who understandeth thee not, loves thee not.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 4, sc. 2, l. [102]

Here are only numbers ratified; but, for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy, caret. Ovidius Naso was the man: and why, indeed, Naso, but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention?

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 4, sc. 2, l. [126]

Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye, ’Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument, Persuade my heart to this false perjury?

Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 4, sc. 3, l. [60]

From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive: They are the ground, the books, the academes,

From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 4, sc. 3, l. [302]

But love, first learnéd in a lady’s eyes, Lives not alone immuréd in the brain, But, with the motion of all elements,

Courses as swift as thought in every power, And gives to every power a double power, Above their functions and their offices.

It adds a precious seeing to the eye;

A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind; A lover’s ears will hear the lowest sound,

When the suspicious head of theft is stopped: Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible Than are the tender horns of cockled snails:

Love’s tongue proves dainty Baccus gross in taste. For valour, is not love a Hercules,

A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear

Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 5, sc. 2, l. [869]

When daisies pied and violets blue And lady-smocks all silver-white And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then, on every tree,

Mocks married men; for thus sings he, Cuckoo;

Cuckoo, cuckoo; O, word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear!

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 5, sc. 2, l. [902]

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 nipped and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-who;

Tu-whit, tu-who—a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson’s saw; And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marion’s nose looks red and raw,

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 5, sc. 2, l. [920]

The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You, that way: we, this way.

‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ (1595) act 5, sc. 2, l. [938]

7.66.19 Macbeth

First Witch: When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

Second Witch: When the hurly-burly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won.

Third Witch: That will be ere the set of sun. First Witch: Where the place?

Second Witch: Upon the heath.

‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 1, sc. 3, l. 83

What! can the devil speak true?

‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 1, sc. 3, l. 107

The Thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me In borrowed robes?

‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 1, sc. 3, l. 108

Oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

The instruments of darkness tell us truths; Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s

In deepest consequence.

‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 1, sc. 3, l. 123

Two truths are told,

As happy prologues to the swelling act Of the imperial theme.

‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 1, sc. 3, l. 127

This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill, cannot be good; if ill,

Why hath it given me earnest of success, Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor: If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, Against the use of nature? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings;

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man that function Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is

But what is not.

‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 1, sc. 3, l. 130

Come what come may,

Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 1, sc. 3, l. 146

Malcolm: Nothing in his life

Became him like the leaving it: he died As one that had been studied in his death To throw away the dearest thing he owed As ’twere a careless trifle.

Duncan: There’s no art

To find the mind’s construction in the face; He was a gentleman on whom I built