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SHAKESPEARE, William Quotes
(1564-1616), English poet and dramatist
Absence from those we love is self from self—a deadly banishment.
Refrain tonight, and that shall lend a hand of easiness to the next abstinence; the next more easy; for use can almost change the stamp of nature, and either curb the devil, or throw him out with wondrous potency.
Be great in act, as you have been in thought.—Suit the action to the word and the word to the action.
The flighty purpose never is o'ertook unless the deed go with it.
Action is eloquence; the eyes of the ignorant are more learned than their ears.
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women in it merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.
Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like a toad, though ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head.
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 twenty to follow mine own teaching.
Wait for the season when to cast good counsels upon subsiding passion.
Those who school others, oft should school themselves.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Never on earth calamity so great, as not to leave to us, if rightly weighed, what would console 'mid what we sorrow for.
Some men never seem to grow old. Always active in thought, always ready to adopt new ideas, they are never chargeable with fogyism. Satisfied, yet ever dissatisfied, settled, yet ever unsettled, they always enjoy the best of what is, and are the first to find the best of what will be.
Ye who are old, remember youth with thought of like affection.
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; and did not, with unbashful forehead, woo the means of weakness and debility: therefore my age is as a lusty winter, frosty but kindly.
Fling away ambition. By that sin angels fell. How then can man, the image of his Maker, hope to win by it?
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself.
The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
Too often those who entertain ambition, expel remorse and nature.
Rancour will out.
All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.
Now good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both.
Company, villainous company hath been the ruin of me.
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 meet that noble minds keep ever with their likes; for who so firm that cannot be seduced.
Nothing more impairs authority than a too frequent or indiscreet use of it. If thunder itself was to be continual, it would excite no more terror than the noise of a mill.
Man, proud man! dressed in a little brief authority, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep.
Talkers are no good doers, be assured.—We go to use our hands and not our tongues.
Because I will not do the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust none; I will live a bachelor.
I will give thrice so much land to any well-deserving friend; but in the way of bargain, mark me, I will cavil on the ninth part of a hair.
He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath none is less than a man.
O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, by that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
Meet the first beginnings; look to the budding mischief before it has time to ripen to maturity.
Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good; a shining gloss that fadeth suddenly; a flower that dies when it begins to bud; a doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower, lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour.
For his bounty there was no winter to it; an autumn it was that grew more by reaping.
A killing tongue, but a quiet sword.
We wound our modesty and make foul the clearness of our deservings, when of ourselves we publish them.
Who knows himself a braggart, let him fear this; for it will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass.
Conceit, more rich in matter than in words, brags of his substance: they are but beggars who can count their worth.
A gentleman that loves to hear himself talk, will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.
Lord Bacon told Sir Edward Coke when he was boasting, " The less you speak of your greatness, the more shall I think of it."
The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.
O, he is as tedious as is a tired horse, or a railing wife; worse than a smoky house.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend; and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
No remedy against this consumption of the purse; borrowing only lingers it out, but the disease is incurable.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
Though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft led by the nose with gold.
We must love men ere they will seem to us worthy of our love.
To business that we love, we rise betimes, and go to it with delight.
I do not like "But yet."—It does allay the good precedence.—Fie upon "but yet."—"But yet" is as a jailer, to bring forth some monstrous malefactor.
No might nor greatness in mortality can censure escape; back wounding calumny the whitest virtue strikes: What king so strong, can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?
Be thou chaste as ice, and pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.
Care is no cure, but rather a corrosive for things that are not to be remedied.
Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye; and where care lodges sleep will never lie.
When clouds are seen wise men put on their cloaks.
Trust not him that hath once broken faith; he who betrayed thee once, will betray thee again.
Things done well and with a care, exempt themselves from fear.
Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.
Ceremony was devised at first, to set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes, and recanting goodness; but where there is true friendship, there needs none.
It is not strange that even our loves should change with our fortunes.
I will chide no heathen in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults.
I had rather have a fool make me merry, than experience make me sad.
A light heart lives long.
While thou livest, keep a good tongue in thy head.
When the moon shone we did not see the candle: so doth the greater glory dim the less.—A substitute shines lightly as a king until a king be by, and then his state empties itself, as doth an inland brook into the main of waters.
I will chide no brother in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults.
Trust not him that hath once broken faith.
Conscience doth make cowards of us all.
I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.
I am constant as the Northern star, of whose true-fixed and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmanent.
O heaven! were man but constant, he were perfect.
Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood.
O that estates, degrees, and offices were not derived corruptly, and that clear honor were purchased by the merit of the wearer.
The cheek is apter than the tongue to tell an errand.
By how much unexpected, by so much we must awake, and endeavor for defence; for courage mounteth with occasion.
Poor wretches, that depend on greatness's favor, dream, as I have done, and wake and find nothing.
She is a woman, therefore maybe wooed; she is a woman, therefore may be won.
Men are April when they woo; December when they wed.
The man that has a tongue, I say, is no man, if with his tongue he cannot win a woman.
Desire of having is the sin of covetousness.
Peace and plenty breed cowards; hardness ever of hardiness is the mother.
Cowards die many times before their death; the valiant never taste of death but once.
The villainy you teach me I will execute ; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
New customs, though they be never so ridiculous, nay, let them be unmanly, yet are followed.
Ah! what a sign it is of evil life, when death's approach is seen so terrible!
Be still prepared for death: and death or life shall thereby be the sweeter.
The sense of death is most in apprehension, and the poor beetle that we tread upon feels a pang as great as when a giant dies.
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!
The flighty purpose never is o'ertook, unless the deed go with it.
Foul deeds will rise, though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.
Defer no time; delays have dangerous ends.
In delay we waste our lights in vain; like lamps by day.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, 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.
These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume.
O thoughts of men accurst.—Past and to come seem best; things present, worst.
This is the excellent foppery of the world! that, when we are sick in fortune, we make guilty of our disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools, by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on.
My desolation begins to make a better life.
To be traduced by ignorant tongues, is the rough brake that virtue must go through.
Happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending.
What, man! Defy the devil! Consider he's an enemy to mankind.
Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest, and despair most sits.
The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.
Love thyself last.—Cherish the hearts that hate thee.—Be just and fear not.—Let all the ends thou aimest at be thy country's, thy God's, and truth's; then if thou fallest, thou fallest a blessed martyr.
If it were done when it is done then it were well it were done quickly.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise—the tent that searches to the bottom of the worst.
Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearmg to attempt.
Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not expressed in fancy; rich, but not gaudy, for the apparel oft proclaims the man.
What is a drunken man like? Like a drown'd man, a fool, and a madman; one draught above heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a third drowns him.
The earth, that is nature's mother, is her tomb.
They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.
The babbling gossip of the air.
There is not one wise man in twenty that will praise himself.
Action is eloquence; the eyes of the ignorant are more learned than their ears.
Let the end try the man.
The end crowns all, and that old common arbitrator, time, will one day end it.
All's well that ends well; still the finish is the crown.
Our enemies are our outward consciences.
Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself.
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky gives us free scope; only, doth backward pull our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.
What we have, we prize, not to the worth while we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, why then we rack the value; then we find the virtue that possession would not show us while it was ours.
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.
Your fat king, and your lean beggar, is but variable service; two dishes, but to one table; that is the end.
I doubt the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth.
Be these juggling fiends no more believed, that palter with us in a double sense; that keep the word of promise to our ear, and break it to our hope.
We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.
Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word.
The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.
It is certain, that either wise bearing or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases one of another; therefore, let them take heed of their company.
It is a good divine that follows his own instructions. I can easier teach twenty men what were good to be done, than to be one of twenty to follow mine own teaching.
Virtue and genuine graces in themselves speak what no words can utter.
It is but a base, ignoble mind that mounts no higher than a bird can soar.
Fearless minds climb soonest unto crowns.
Let us teach ourselves that honorable step, not to outdo discretion.
Violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die; like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume.—They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.
Oftentimes excusing of a fault, doth make a fault the worse by the excuse.
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises.
He cannot be a perfect man, not being tried and tutored in the world.—Experience is by industry achieved, and perfected by the swift course of time.
To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.
Experience is a jewel, and it had need be so, for it is often purchased at an infinite rate.
Where is any author in the world teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?
The eyes of women are Promethean fires.
Faster than his tongue did make offence, his eye did heal it up.
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind.
Your face is a book, where men may read strange matters.
The cheek is apter than the tongue to tell an errand.
In thy face I see the map of honor, truth, and loyalty.
All men's faces are true, whatsoever their hands are.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath; a goodly apple rotten at the heart!
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.
I am not covetous for gold; but if it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul alive.
Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.
The fashion doth wear out more apparel the man.
There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will.
Our wills and fates do so contrary run, that our devices still are overthrown; our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate.
The fault-finder—it is his nature's plague to spy into abuses; and oft his jealousy shapes faults that are not.
Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.
In time we hate that which we often fear.
The uncertain glory of an April day.
He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat; it ever changes with the next block.
His words are bonds; his oaths are oracles; his heart is as far from fraud as heaven from earth.
I am constant as the Northern star, of whose true-fixed and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.
O Heaven! were man but constant, he were perfect; that one error fills him with faults.
You play the spaniel, and think with wagging of your tongue to win me.
The soul of this man is in his clothes.
Use every man after his deserts, and who shall escape whipping?
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me.
To fear the worst, oft cures the worst.
Who from crimes would pardoned be, in mercy should set others free.
The friends thou hast and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel.
The amity that wisdom knits not. folly may easily untie.
For his bounty, there was no winter in't; an autumn 'twas that grew the more by reaping.
It is not enough to help the feeble up, but to support him after.
What thou wilt thou shalt rather enforce with thy smile than hew to it with thy sword.
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
Like madness is the glory of this life.
I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.
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.
How quickly nature falls to revolt when gold becomes her object.
How far that little candle throws his beams! so shines a good deed in a naughty world.
The king-becoming graces are justice, verity, temperance, stableness, bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, devotion, patience, courage, fortitude.
That word "Grace," in an ungracious mouth, is profane.
O Lord, who lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.
Some are born great; some achieve greatness; and some have greatness thrust upon them.
He is not great, who is not greatly good.
Every one can master a grief but he that hath it.
Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead; excessive grief the enemy of the living.
Some grief shows much of love; but much of grief shows still some want of wit.
Give sorrow words.—The grief that does not speak, whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break.
Be bright and jovial among your guests tonight.
Unbidden guests are often welcomest when they are gone.
The mind of guilt is full of scorpions.
Though it sleep long, the venom of great guilt, when death, or danger, or detection comes, will bite the spirit fiercely.
Better it were, that all the miseries which nature owns were ours at once, than guilt.
The guilt being great, the fear doth still exceed.
Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; the thief doth fear each bush an officer.
They whose guilt within their bosom lies, imagine every eye beholds their blame.
Guiltiness will speak though tongues were out of use.
Refrain tonight, and that shall lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence; the nest more easy; for use almost can change the stamp of nature, and either curb the devil or throw him out with wondrous potency.
How use doth breed a habit in a man.
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
Her sunny locks hang on her temples like a golden fleece.
Silence is the perfectest herald of joy. I were but little happy if I could say how much.
It is the strumpet's plague to beguile many, and be beguiled by one.
Wisely and slow;—they stumble that run fast.
Modest wisdom plucks me from over-credulous haste.
A good heart is worth gold.
The love of heaven makes one heavenly.
Heaven, the treasury of everlasting joy.
Divines and dying men may talk of hell, but in my heart her several torments dwell.
"Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support him after.
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
God be praised, who, to believing souls, gives light in darkness, comfort in despair.
If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work; but when they seldom come, the wished for come.
Our holy lives must win a new world's crown.
To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
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.
No legacy is so rich as honesty.
Mine honor is my life; both grow in one; take honor from me and my life is done.
If it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offensive soul alive.
Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.
The miserable hath no other medicine but only hope.
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings; kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.
Hope is a lover's staff; walk hence with that, and manage it against despairing thoughts.
It is the witness still of excellence to put a strange face on its own perfection.
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.
But then I sigh, and, with a piece of Scripture, tell them—that God bids us do good for evil: and thus I clothe my naked villainy, with old odd ends, stolen forth of Holy Writ: and seem a saint, when most I play the devil. Why, I can smile, and murder while I smile: and cry, content, to that which grieves my heart; and wet my cheeks with artificial tears, and frame my face to all occasions.
With devotion's visage, and pious action, we do sugar o'er the devil himself.
One may smile and smile and be a villain still.
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
Ten thousand harms more than the ills we knew, our idleness doth hatch.
Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.
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 shape, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name; such tricks hath strong imagination.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.
No profit grows where is no pleasure taken; in brief, sir, study what you mosf affect.
Were man but constant, he were perfect; that one error fills him with faults; makes him run through sins; inconstancy falls off ere it begins.
Set honor in one eye, and death in the other, and I will look on both indifferently.
We may outrun by violent swiftness that which we run at, and lose by overrunning.
Ingratitude is monstrous; and for the multitude to be ungrateful, were to make a monster of the multitude.
I hate ingratitude more in man than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, or any taint of vice, whose strong corruption inhabits our frail blood.
Ingratitude; thou marble-hearted fiend, more hideous when thou showest thee in a child, than the sea monster.
Filial ingratitude! Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand for lifting food to it.
Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude.—Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky, thou dost not bite so nigh, as benefits forgot.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.
To wilful men, the injuries they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.
Oh, she is fallen into a pit of ink that the wide sea hath drops too few to wash her clean again!
Let there be gall enough in thy ink; though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter.
What is a stronger breastplate than a heart untainted?
The silence, often, of pure innocence persuades when speaking fails.
Unstained thoughts do seldom dream on evil.
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh.
O, judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.
By a divine instinct men's minds distrust ensuing danger, as by proof we see the waters swell before a boisterous storm.
It is the mind that makes the body rich; and as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, so honor peereth in the meanest habit.
Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil.
Like a man to double business bound, I stand in pause where I shall first begin, and both neglect.
That we would do, we should do when we would; for this "would" changes, and hath abatements and delays as many, as there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; and then, this "should" is like a spendthrift sigh, that hurts by easing.
Trifles light as air, are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ.
Oh, beware of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.
'Tis a monster begot upon itself, born on itself.
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it, never in the tongue of him that makes it.
Men's judgments are a parcel of their fortunes; and things outward do draw the inward quality after them.
Be just and fear not; let all the ends thou aimest at be thy country's, thy God's, and truth's.
Were he my brother, nay my kingdom's heir, such neighbor nearness to our sacred blood should nothing privilege him, nor partialize the unstooping firmness of my upright soul.
Use every man after his desert, and who should escape whipping?
Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love.
He hath a tear for pity, and a hand open as day for melting charity.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
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.
And steal immortal kisses from her lips, which, even in pure and vestal modesty, still blush as thinking their own kisses sin.
Upon thy cheek I lay this zealous kiss, as seal to the indenture of my love.
Now by the jealous queen of heaven, that kiss I carried from thee, dear, my true lip hath virgin'd it e'er since.
His kissing is as full of sanctity as the touch of holy bread.
Then he kissed me hard, as if he plucked up kisses by the roots, that grew upon my lips.
Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.
There was speech in their dumbness; language in their very gesture.
The law is past depth to those who, without heed, do plunge into it.
A fish that hangs in the net, like a poor man's right in the law, will hardly come out of it.
Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.
We must not make a scarecrow of the law, setting it up to fear the birds of prey, and letting it keep one shape till custom make it their perch, and not their terror.
Adversaries in law strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend.
When lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.
Liars—past all shame—so past all truth.
My library was dukedom large enough.
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 time of life is short; to spend that shortness basely, 'twere too long.
Looks kill love, and love by looks reviveth; a smile recures the wounding of a frown.
Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing; 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.
You cram these words into mine ears against the stomach of my sense.
He loves to hear himself talk, and will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.
He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.
Many a man's tongue shakes out its master's undoing.
Wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss, but cheerily seek how to redress their harms.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.
As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.
But love is blind, and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit.
Love reasons without reason.
Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.
A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon than love that would seem hid; love's night is noon.
Base men, being in love, have then a nobility in their natures, more than is native to them.
They love least, that let men know their love.
The blood of youth burns not with such excess, as gravity's revolt to wantonness.
Superfluity comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer.
How pregnant, sometimes, his replies are; a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of!
A maiden never bold; of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion blushed at herself.
The honor of a maid is her name, and no legacy is so rich as honesty.
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!
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?
To study mankind, is not learning to hate them; so far from such a malevolent end, it is learning to bear and live easily with them.
He is but the counterfeit of a man, who has not the life of a man.
Who dares do all that may become a man, and dares no more, he is a man indeed.
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.
It is certain that either wise bearing, or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one from another; therefore let men take heed of their company.
Maids want nothing but husbands, and when they have them, they want everything.
Hasty marriage seldom proveth well.
Hanging and wiving go by destiny.
Let still the woman take an elder than herself; so wears she to him: so sways she level in her husband's heart.
Take not too short a time, to make a world-wide bargain in.
Men, at some time, are masters of their fates.
The means heaven yields must be embraced, and not neglected; else, if heaven would, and we will not; heaven's offer we refuse.
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!
We must love men, ere to us they will seem worthy of our love.
Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods? Draw near them then in being merciful; sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.
The quality of mercy is not strained; it droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath; it is twice blessed; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 'tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. Mercy is an attribute to God himself; and earthly power doth then show likest God's, when mercy seasons justice. 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.
Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.
How would you be, if he, who 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.
The force of his own merit makes his way, a gift that heaven gives for him.
O, that estates, degrees, and offices were not derived corruptly, and that clear honor were purchased by the merit of the wearer.
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!
Miracles are ceased, and therefore we must needs admit the means how things are perfected.
Men shut their doors against the setting sun.
You have many enemies that know not why they are so, but, like village curs, bark when their fellows do.
The blind monster, with uncounted heads, the still discordant, wavering multitude.
In the modesty of fearful duty, I read as much as from the rattling tongue of saucy and audacious eloquence.
The cock, that is the trumpet of the morn, doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat awake the god of day.
Look, what envious streaks do lace the severing clouds in yonder east! Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day stands tip-toe on the misty mountain-tops.
The morning steals upon the night, melting the darkness.
The silent hours steal on, and flaky darkness breaks within the east.
When griping grief the heart doth wound, and doleful dumps the mind oppress, then music, with her silver sound, with speedy help doth lend redress.
The man that hath not music in himself, and is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; let no man trust him.
Preposterous ass! that never read so far to know the cause why music was ordained! was it not to refresh the mind of man, after his studies, or his usual pain?
Frame your mind to mirth and merriment, which bar a thousand harms and lengthen life.
Man delights not me, nor woman either.
O mischief, thou art swift to enter in the thoughts of desperate men.
Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.
To climb steep hills requires slow pace at first.
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.
He that wants money, means, and content, is without three good friends.
Oh, what a world of vile ill-favored faults looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
What is in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.
Good name, in man or woman, is the immediate jewel of their souls.—Who steals my purse steals trash; but he that filches from me my good name, robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed.
There is no virtue like necessity.
What fate imposes, men must needs abide; it boots not to resist both wind and tide.
In persons grafted in a serious trust, negligence is a crime.
Self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.
Though it be honest, it is never good to bring bad news.—Give to a gracious message a host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell themselves when they be felt.
The first bringer of unwelcome news hath but a losing office.
They are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time, to show virtue her own image; scorn, her own features; and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure.
All, with one consent, praise newborn gauds, though they are made and molded of things past.
New customs, though they be never so ridiculous, nay, let them be unmanly, yet are followed.
It is a great sin to swear unto a sin, but greater sin to keep a sinful oath.
Not for all the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or the profound sea hides in unknown fathoms, break thou thine oath.
Let them obey that know not how to rule.
What's past, and what's to come, is strewed with husks and formless ruin of oblivion.
In the swallowing gulf of dark forgetfulness and deep oblivion.
A right judgment draws us a profit from all things we see.
All is not offence that indiscretion finds, and dotage terms so.
When impious men bear sway, the post of honor is a private station.
It is the curse of service that preferment goes by letter and affection, not by the old gradation where each second stood heir to the first.
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.
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds, makes deeds ill done!
Take all the swift advantage of the hours.
Who seeks, and will not take when once 'tis offered, shall never find it more.
The camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows.
The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on; and doves will peck, in safeguard of their brood.
Fishes live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.
Suit the action to the word; the word to the action; with this special observance, that you overstep not the modesty of nature.
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear a fearful battle rendered you in music.
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.
We do not keep the outward form of order, where there is deep disorder in the mind.
There was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently, however they have writ the style of gods, and made a pish at chance and sufferance.
Mercy is not itself, that oft looks so; pardon is still the nurse of second woe.
Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.
The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven's lieutenants.
Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave.
What! gone without a word? Ay, so true love should do: it cannot speak; for truth hath better deeds than words to grace it.
Farewell, God knows when we shall meet again.—I have a faint cold fear thrill through my veins, that almost freezes up the heat of life.
The mind by passion driven from its firm hold, becomes a feather to each wind that blows.
The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps over a cold decree.
Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core, aye, in my heart of hearts.
Passion makes the will lord of the reason.
Things without remedy, should be without regard; what is done, is done.
What's gone and past help, should be past grief.
That which in mean men we entitle patience, is pale, cold cowardice in noble breasts.
How poor are they who have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees.
I do love my country's good with a respect more tender, more holy and profound than mine own life.
Be just and fear not; let all the ends thou aimest at, be thy country's, thy God's, and truth's.
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.
'Tis death to me, to be at enmity; I hate it, and desire all good men's love.
A peace is of the nature of a conquest; for then both parties nobly are subdued, and neither party loser.
Peace, dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful birth.
Perseverance, dear my lord, keeps honor bright. To have none, is to hang quite out of fashion, like a rusty nail in monumental mockery.
An enterprise, when fairly once begun, should not be left till all that ought is won.
See first that the design is wise and just: that ascertained, pursue it resolutely; do not for one repulse forego the purpose that you resolved to effect.
Much rain wears the marble.
To willful men, the injuries that they themselves procure, must be their schoolmasters.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.
Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy.
Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.
The place is dignified by the doer's deed.
If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work: but when they seldom come, they wished for come, and nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
Violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die; like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume: the sweetest honey is loathsome in his own deliciousness, and in the taste confounds the appetite.
Pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any true decision.
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.
Men must learn now with pity to dispense, for policy sits above conscience.
The devil knew not what he did when he made man politic; he crossed himself by it.
Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down the hill, lest it break thy neck with following it; but the great one that goes up the hill, let him draw thee after.
Turn him to any cause of policy, the Gordian knot of it he will unloose, familiar as his garter.
An thou canst not smile as the wind sets, thou wilt catch cold shortly.
A politician—one that would circumvent God.
You common cry of ours! whose breath I hate as reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize as the dead carcasses of unburied men that do corrupt the air.
There have been many great men that have flattered the people, who never loved them; and there may be many that they have loved, they know not wherefore: so that, if they love they know not why, they hate upon no better ground.
I will not choose what many men desire, because I will not jump with common spirits, and rank me with the barbarous multitude.
A habitation giddy and unsure hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
Position
From lowest place, when virtuous things proceed, the place is dignified by the doer's deed.
It so falls out that what we have we prize not to the worth whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, why then we rack the value; then we find the virtue that possession would not show us whiles it was ours.
Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; robes and furred gowns hide all.
Poor and content is rich, and rich enough; but riches endless is as poor as winter to him that ever fears he shall be poor.
One good deed, dying tongueless, slaughters a thousand waiting upon that. Our praises are our wages.
There's not one wise man among twenty will praise himself.
Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear.
We, ignorant of ourselves, beg often our own harms, which the wise powers deny us for our good; so we find profit by losing of our prayers.
He who the sword of heaven will bear, should be as holy as severe.
It is a good divine that follows his own instructions.
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.
Each present joy or sorrow seems the chief.
Who makes the fairest show, means most deceit.
He that is proud eats up himself; pride is his glass, his trumpet, his chronicle; and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours the deed in the praise.
O world, how apt the poor are to be proud!
Waste no vain words on the consumed time, but take the instant by the forward top; for on man's best resolved, best urged decrees, the inaudible and viewless foot of time steals, ere he can effect.
That we would do, we should do when we would; for this would changes, and hath abatements and delays as many, as there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; and then this should is like a spendthrift sigh, that hurts by easing.
Procrastination says, "The next advantage we will take thoroughly."
Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word.
Some falls are means the happier to rise.
Let's take the instant by the forward top; for we are old, and on our quickest decrees, the inaudible and noiseless foot of time steals ere we can effect them.
If it were done when it is done, then it were well it were done quickly.
Celerity is never more admired than by the negligent.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder, and that craves wary walking.
We must follow, not force providence.
There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.
Better be three hours too soon than one minute too late.
There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple; if the ill spirit have so fair a house, good things will starve to dwell with it.
The flighty purpose never is o'ertook unless the deed go with it.
Beware of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.
Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just, and he but naked, though locked up in steel, whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.
In a false quarrel there is no true valor.
I pray you bear me henceforth from the noise and rumor of the field, where I may think the remnant of my thoughts in peace, and part this body and my soul with contemplation and devout desires.
Have at you with a proverb.
Full of wise saws and modern instances.
In rage deaf as the sea; hasty as fire.
Oppose not rage while rage is in its force, but give it way a while and let it waste.
We may outrun by violent swiftness that which we run at, and lose by overrunning.
Exceedingly well read and profited in strange concealments.
How well he is read to reason against reading.
If reasons were as plenty as blackberries I would give no man a reason upon compulsion.
I have no other but a woman's reason; I think him so, because I think him so.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and godlike reason to rust in us unused.
Revelation is a telescope kindly given us, through which reason should look up to the heavens.
Good reasons must, of force, give place to better.
Strong reasons make strong actions.
This word "rebellion"—it did froze them up, as fish are in a pond.
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.
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.
Recreation is not being idle; it is easing the wearied part by change of occupation.
Alas! Alas! why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once; and He that might the vantage best have took, found out the remedy.
They say best men are moulded out of faults, and, for the most, become much more the better for being a little bad!
Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear.
I cannot but remember such things were, that were most precious to me.
I am afraid to think what I have done; lock on it again I dare not.
A true repentance shuns the evil itself, more than the external suffering or the shame.
Repentance is the heart's sorrow, and a clear life ensuing.
Our foster-nurse of nature is repose.
These should be hours for necessities, not for delights; times to repair our nature with comforting repose, and not for us to waste.
Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word; the sting of a reproach is the truth of it.
Few love to hear the sins they love to act.
Better a little chiding than a great deal of heartbreak.
Chide him for faults, and do it reverently when you perceive his blood inclined to mirth.
I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults.
The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation; that away, men are but gilded loam or painted clay.
Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself; and what remains is bestial.
Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.
Experience teacheth that resolution is a sole help in need.
Do not, for one repulse, forego the purpose that you resolved to effect.
Be stirring as the time, be fire with fire, threaten the threatener, and outface the brow of bragging horror; so shall inferior eyes, that borrow their behaviors from the great, grow great by your example and put on the dauntless spirit of resolution.
How use doth breed a habit in a man! this shadowy desert, unfrequented woods, I better brook than flourishing peopled towns.
Our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Revenge has ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any true decision.
To revenge is no valor, but to bear.
Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe thyself.
Rather let my head stoop to the block, than these knees bow to any save to the God of heaven.
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.
Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere.
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.
Rumor is a pipe blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, and of so easy and plain a stop, that the blunt monster with uncounted heads, the still discordant wavering multitude can play upon it.
On rumor's tongues continual slanders ride.
The sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness, and in the taste confounds the appetite.
A surfeit of the sweetest things the deepest loathing to the stomach brings.
To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof little more than a little is by much too much.
The greatest scandal waits on greatest state.
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.
'Tis in my memory locked, and you yourself shall keep the key of it.
Fire that is closest kept burns most of all.
Who shall be true to us, when we are so unsecret to ourselves?
Two may keep counsel, putting one away.
Better conquest never canst thou make, than warn thy constant and thy nobler parts against giddy, loose suggestions.
Brave conquerors! for so you are, that war against your own affections and the huge army of the world's desires.
I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against, whom I know most faults.
Go to your bosom, knock there and ask your heart what it doth know that is like my brother's fault; if it confess a natural guiltiness, such as his is, let it not sound a thought upon your tongue against my brother.
Of all knowledge the wise and good seek most to know themselves.
Self-love is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.
Love thyself last.
There is not one wise man among twenty will praise himself.
Let every eye negotiate for itself, and trust no agent.
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to Heaven.
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.
Lawless are they that make their wills their law.
What is a man, if his chief good, and market of his time, be but to sleep, and feed? a beast, no more.
In sickness let me not so much say, am I getting better of my pain? as am I getting better for it?
I do know of those that therefore only are reputed wise, for saying nothing.
The silence, often, of pure innocence, persuades when speaking fails.
Silence is the perfectest herald of joy; I were but little happy if I could say how much.
He is of a free and open nature that thinks all men honest who but seem to be so, and will as tenderly be led by the nose as asses are.
Whose nature is so far from doing harms that he suspects none.
Few love to hear the sins they love to act.
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.
No might nor greatness can censure escape; back-wounding calumny the whitest virtue strikes; what king so strong, can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?
Slander, whose edge is sharper than the sword; whose tongue outvenoms all the worms of Nile; whose breath rides on the posting winds, and doth belie all corners of the world.
That thou art blamed, shall not be thy defect; for slander's mark was ever yet the fair; so thou be good, slander doth but approve thy worth the greater.
Done to death by slanderous tongues.
Our foster-nurse of nature is repose.
Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleeve 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.
Weariness can snore upon the flint, when restive sloth finds the down pillow hard.
Downy sleep, death's counterfeit.
Those happiest smiles that played on her ripe lips seemed not to know what guests were in her eyes, which parted thence as pearls from diamonds dropped.
Society is no comfort to one not sociable.
A soldier seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth.
Give sorrow words: the grief, that does not speak, whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break.
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.
One sorrow never comes but brings an heir that may succeed as his inheritor.
Sorrow breaks season, and reposing hours; makes the night morning, and the noontide night.
I am as constant as the northern star; of whose true, fixed, and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.
They that stand high have many blasts to shake them.
Oh! it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
Nothing can seem foul to those that win.
Against self-slaughter there is a prohibition so divine that cravens my weak hand.
The dread of something after death puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear the ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of.
That orbed continent, the fire that severs day from night.
The weary sun hath made a golden set; and by the light track of his fiery car, gives token of a goodly day tomorrow.
Look how the world's poor people are amazed at apparitions, signs, and prodigies!
Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind: the thief doth fear each bush an officer.
Whose own hard dealings teach them, suspect the thoughts of others.
A noble brother, whose nature is so far from doing harms, that he suspects none.
Talkers are no good doers.
Many a man's tongue shakes out his master's undoing.
What a spendthrift he is of his tongue.
My plenteous joys, wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves in drops of sorrow.
What a hell of witchcraft lies in the small orb of one particular tear!
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.
Great men should drink with harness on their throats.
Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is the devil.
It is one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder, and that craves wary walking.
When devils will their blackest sins put on, they do suggest at first with heavenly shows.
Lie in the lap of sin, and not mean harm? It is hypocrisy against the devil: They that mean virtuously, and yet do so, the devil their virtue tempts, and they tempt heaven.
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes deeds ill done!
Sometimes we are devils ourselves, when we will tempt the frailty of our powers, presuming on their changeful potency.
Do not give dalliance too much the rein; the strongest oaths are straw to the fire in the blood.
Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.
Or any ill escaped, or good attained, let us remember still Heaven chalked the way that brought us thither.
God's goodness hath been great to thee.—Let never day nor night unhallowed pass but still remember what the Lord hath done.
Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried.
Second thoughts they say are best.
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none but our own.
The end crowns all; and that old common arbitrator, time, will one day end it.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
Rather see the wonders of the world abroad than, living dully sluggardized at home, wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.
It is time to fear when tyrants seem to kiss.
The man was noble; but with his last attempt he wiped it out; betrayed his country; and his name remains to the ensuing age abhorred.
Though those who are betrayed do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor stands in worse case of woe.
While you live, tell truth and shame the devil.
The weary sun hath made a golden set, and, by the bright track of his fiery car, gives token of a goodly day tomorrow.
Hardness ever of hardness is the mother.
Tyranny sways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffered.
Oh, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
She hath tied sharp-toothed unkindness, a vulture here.
The better part of valor is discretion.
When valor preys on reason, it eats the sword it fights with.
There is no love-broker in the world can more prevail in man's commendation with woman, than report of valor.
Nothing is so credulous as vanity, or so ignorant of what becomes itself.
Vanity keeps persons in favor with themselves, who are out of favor with all others.
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, consuming means soon preys upon itself.
A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross.
Words, words, mere words; no matter from the heart.
He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.
Vice repeated is like the wandering wind; blows dust in others' eyes, to spread itself.
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us.
There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on its outward parts.
Our pleasant vices are made the whip to scourge us.
One sin doth provoke another.
But yesterday the word of Caesar might have stood against the world; now lies he there, and none so poor to do him reverence.
Sometimes the brightest day hath cloud, and summer evermore succeeds barren winter with its wrathful, nipping cold.—So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.
A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers.
Better three hours too soon, than one minute too late.
The evil you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.
Violent fires soon burn out themselves, small showers last long, but sudden storms are short; he tires betimes that spurs too fast.
Violent delights have violent ends.
We rarely like the virtues we have not.
Our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our Crimea would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.
Our life is short, but to expand that span to vast eternity is virtue's work.
Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman.
The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows; they are polluted offerings, more abhorred than spotted livers in the sacrifice.
Those mouth-made vows which break themselves in swearing.
Unheedful vows may heedfully be broken.
Men's vows are women's traitors.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
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.
Gold is worse poison to men's souls, doing more murders in this loathsome world, than any mortal drug.
A tableful of welcome makes scarce one dainty dish.
Small cheer and great welcome make a merry feast.
Welcome ever smiles, and farewell goes out sighing.
What rein can hold licentious wickedness, when down the hill he holds his fierce career?
You are my true and honorable wife, as dear to me, as are the ruddy drops that visit my sad heart.
A light wife doth make a heavy husband.
Hanging and wiving go by destiny.
Why man, she is mine own; and I as rich in having such a jewel, as twenty seas if all their sands were pearl, the water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.
He wants wit who wants resolved will.
The will of man is by his reason swayed.
Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.
O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee—Devil! Oh, that men should put an enemy to their mouths, to steal away their brains! that we should, with joy, revel, pleasure, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts!
Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good, but graciously to know I am no better; thus wisdom wishes to appear most bright when it doth tax itself.
Women are the books, the arts, the academies, that show, contain, and nourish all the world.
'Tis beauty, that doth oft make women proud; 'tis virtue, that doth make them most admired; 'tis modesty, that makes them seem divine.
Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love.
When words are scarce they're seldom spent in vain.
It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are no deeds.
You have too much respect upon the world: they lose it that do buy it with much care.
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: words, without thoughts, never to heaven go.
To persist in doing wrong extenuates not the wrong, but makes it much more heavy.
Youthful rashness skips like a hare over the meshes of good counsel.
Youth no less becomes the light and careless livery that it wears, than settled age his sables and his weeds, importing health and graveness.
My salad days, when I was green in judgment.
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