His flight was madness: when our actions do not, Our fears do make us traitors.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 4, sc. 2, l. 3
He loves us not;
He wants the natural touch; for the poor wren, The most diminutive of birds, will fight— Her young ones in her nest—against the owl.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 4, sc. 2, l. 8
Son: And must they all be hanged that swear and lie? Lady Macduff: Every one.
Son: Who must hang them?
Lady Macduff: Why, the honest men.
Son: Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enow to beat the honest men and hang up them.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 4, sc. 2, l. [51]
Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 4, sc. 3, l. 22
Stands Scotland where it did?
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 4, sc. 3, l. 164
What! man; ne’er pull your hat upon your brows; Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 4, sc. 3, l. 208
Malcolm: Let’s make us medicine of our great revenge, To cure this deadly grief.
Macduff: He has no children. All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What! all my pretty chickens and their dam, At one fell swoop?
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 4, sc. 3, l. 216
Malcolm: Dispute it like a man. Macduff: I shall do so;
But I must also feel it as a man.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 4, sc. 3, l. 219
Doctor: You see her eyes are open. Gentlewoman: Ay, but their sense is shut.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 1, l. [27]
Out, damned spot! out, I say! One; two: why then, ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky! Fie, my
lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 1, l. [38]
The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now? What! will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o’ that, my lord, no more o’ that: you mar all with this starting.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 1, l. [46]
Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! oh! oh!
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 1, l. [55]
I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 1, l. [60]
Wash your hands, put on your night-gown; look not so pale.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 1, l. [67]
What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 1, l. [74]
More needs she the divine than the physician.
‘Macbeth’ act 5, sc. 1, l. 74
Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets; More needs she the divine than the physician.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 1, l. [78]
Those he commands move only in command, Nothing in love; now does he feel his title Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe Upon a dwarfish thief.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 2, l. 19
Bring me no more reports; let them fly all: Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane
I cannot taint with fear.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 3, l. 1
The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon! Where gott’st thou that goose look?
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 3, l. 11
I have livéd long enough: my way of life Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 3, l. 22
Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?
Doctor: Therein the patient Must minister to himself.
Macbeth: Throw physic to the dogs; I’ll none of it.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 3, l. 37
Hang out our banners on the outward walls;
The cry is still, ‘They come’; our castle’s strength Will laugh a siege to scorn.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 5, l. 1
I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
The time has been my senses would have cooled To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in’t. I have supped full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, Cannot once start me.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 5, l. 9
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word, To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 5, l. 16
If that which he avouches does appear, There is nor flying hence, nor tarrying here. I ’gin to be aweary of the sun,
And wish the estate o’ the world were now undone. Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack! At least we’ll die with harness on our back.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 5, l. 47
Macbeth: I bear a charméd life, which must not yield To one of woman born.
Macduff: Despair thy charm;
And let the angel who thou still hast served Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother’s womb Untimely ripped.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 7, l. 41
Lay on, Macduff;
And damned be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 7, l. 62
Siward: Had he his hurts before? Ross: Ay, on the front.
Siward: Why, then, God’s soldier be he! Had I as many sons as I have hairs,
I would not wish them to a fairer death.
‘Macbeth’ (1606) act 5, sc. 7, l. 75
7.66.20 Measure for Measure
Now, as fond fathers,
Having bound up the threat’ning twigs of birch, Only to stick it in their children’s sight
For terror, not to use, in time the rod
Becomes more mocked than feared; so our decrees, Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead,
And liberty plucks justice by the nose; The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart Goes all decorum.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 1, sc. 3, l. 23
I hold you as a thing enskyed and sainted; By your renouncement an immortal spirit, And to be talked with in sincerity,
As with a saint.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 1, sc. 4, l. 34
Your brother and his lover have embraced:
As those that feed grow full, as blossoming time That from the seedness the bare fallow brings
To teeming foison, even so her plenteous womb Expresseth his full tilth and husbandry.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 1, sc. 4, l. 40
A man whose blood
Is very snow-broth; one who never feels The wanton stings and motions of the sense, But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge With profits of the mind, study and fast.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 1, sc. 4, l. 57
We must not make a scarecrow of the law, Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it Their perch and not their terror.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 2, sc. 1, l. 1
’Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, Another thing to fall. I not deny,
The jury, passing on the prisoner’s life, May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two Guiltier than him they try.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 2, sc. 1, l. 17
This will last out a night in Russia, When nights are longest there.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 2, sc. 1, l. [144]
There is a vice that most I do abhor,
And most desire should meet the blow of justice, For which I would not plead, but that I must; For which I must not plead, but that I am
At war ’twixt will and will not.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 2, sc. 2, l. 29
Condemn the fault and not the actor of it?
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 2, sc. 2, l. 37
No ceremony that to great ones ’longs,
Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword, The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe, Become them with one half so good a grace As mercy does.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 2, sc. 2, l. 59
O! it is excellent
To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 2, sc. 2, l. 107
Man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, As make the angels weep.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 2, sc. 2, l. 117
Great men may jest with saints; ’tis wit in them, But, in the less foul profanation.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 2, sc. 2, l. 127
That in the captain’s but a choleric word, Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 2, sc. 2, l. 130
Is this her fault or mine?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 2, sc. 2, l. 162
O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue; never could the strumpet, With all her double vigour, art and nature,
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid Subdues me quite. Ever till now
When men were fond, I smiled and wondered how.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 2, sc. 2, l. 180
Might there not be a charity in sin To save this brother’s life?
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 2, sc. 4, l. 64
Claudio: The miserable have no other medicine But only hope:
I have hope to live, and am prepared to die. Duke: Be absolute for death; either death or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art Servile to all the skyey influences,
That dost this habitation, where thou keep’st, Hourly afflict. Merely, thou art death’s fool; For him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun,
And yet run’st toward him still.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 3, sc. 1, l. 2
If thou art rich, thou’rt poor;
For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, Thou bear’st thy heavy riches but a journey, And death unloads thee.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 3, sc. 1, l. 25
Thou hast nor youth nor age;
But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep, Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied eld.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 3, sc. 1, l. 32
Dar’st thou die?
The sense of death is most in apprehension, And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 3, sc. 1, l. 75
If I must die,
I will encounter darkness as a bride, And hug it in mine arms.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 3, sc. 1, l. 81
Sure, it is no sin;
Or of the deadly seven it is the least.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 3, sc. 1, l. 108
Claudio: Death is a fearful thing. Isabella: And shamed life a hateful.
Claudio: Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbéd ice; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about The pendant world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling: ’tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathéd worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 3, sc. 1, l. 114
The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 3, sc. 1, l. [182]
Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 3, sc. 1, l. [214]
There, at the moated grange, resides this dejected Mariana.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 3, sc. 1, l. [279]
Some report a sea-maid spawned him; some that he was begot between two stock-fishes. But it is certain that when he makes water his urine is congealed ice.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 3, sc. 2, l. [117]
A very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 3, sc. 2, l. [151]
Take, O take those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn; And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn:
But my kisses bring again, bring again;
Seals of love, but sealed in vain, sealed in vain.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 4, sc. 1, l. 1
Though music oft hath such a charm
To make bad good, and good provoke to harm.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 4, sc. 1, l. 16
He will discredit our mystery.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 4, sc. 2, l. [29]
Every true man’s apparel fits your thief.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 4, sc. 2, l. [46]
A man that apprehends death no more dreadfully but as a drunken sleep; careless, reckless, and fearless of what’s past, present, or to come; insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 4, sc. 2, l. [148]
O! death’s a great disguiser.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 4, sc. 2, l. [185]
I am a kind of burr; I shall stick.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 4, sc. 3, l. [193]
Let the devil
Be sometime honoured for his burning throne.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 5, sc. 1, l. [289]
Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 5, sc. 1, l. [411]
They say best men are moulded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad: so may my husband.
‘Measure for Measure’ (1604) act 5, sc. 1, l. [440]
7.66.21 The Merchant of Venice
Antonio: In sooth I know not why I am so sad: It wearies me; you say it wearies you;
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn;
And such a want-wit sadness makes of me, That I have much ado to know myself. Salarino: Your mind is tossing on the ocean; There, where your argosies with portly sail,— Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood, Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,—
Do overpeer the petty traffickers,
That curtsy to them, do them reverence,
As they fly by them with their woven wings.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 1, l. 1
Now, by two-headed Janus,
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 1, l. 50
You have too much respect upon the world: They lose it that do buy it with much care.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 1, l. 74
I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 1, l. 77
Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 1, l. 83
There are a sort of men whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond, And do a wilful 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!’ O, my Antonio, I do know of these, That therefore only are reputed wise, For saying nothing.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 1, l. 88
Fish not, with this melancholy bait, For this fool gudgeon, this opinion.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 1, l. 101
Silence is only commendable
In a neat’s tongue dried and a maid not vendible.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 1, l. 111
Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat, hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them; and, when you have them, they are not worth the search.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 1, l. 114
My purse, my person, my extremest means Lie all unlocked to your occasions.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 1, l. [139]
In Belmont is a lady richly left,
And she is fair, and fairer than the word,
Of wondrous virtues; sometimes from her eyes I did receive fair speechless messages.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 1, l. [162]
By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is aweary of this great world.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 2, l. 1
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.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 2, l. [5]
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.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 2, l. [13]
He doth nothing but talk of his horse.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 2, l. [43]
God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ (1596-8) act 1, sc. 2, l. [59]
