by Edith Nesbit
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
Merchant of Venice — I. 3.
DEEDS.
Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o’erwhelm them to men’s eyes.
Hamlet — I. 2.
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds,
Makes deeds ill done!
King John — IV. 2.
DELAY.
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.
Hamlet — IV. 7.
DELUSION.
For love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul;
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place;
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.
Hamlet — III. 4.
DISCRETION.
Let’s teach ourselves that honorable stop,
Not to outsport discretion.
Othello — II. 3.
DOUBTS AND FEARS.
I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confined, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.
Macbeth — III. 4.
DRUNKENNESS.
Boundless intemperance.
In nature is a tyranny; it hath been
Th’ untimely emptying of the happy throne,
And fall of many kings.
Measure for Measure — I. 3.
DUTY OWING TO OURSELVES AND OTHERS.
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 checked for silence,
But never taxed for speech.
All’s Well that Ends Well — I. 1.
EQUIVOCATION.
But yet
I do not like but yet, it does allay
The good precedence; fye upon but yet:
But yet is as a gailer to bring forth
Some monstrous malefactor.
Antony and Cleopatra — II. 5.
EXCESS.
A surfeit of the sweetest things
The deepest loathing to the stomach brings.
Midsummer Night’s Dream — II. 3.
Every inordinate cup is unblessed,
and the ingredient is a devil.
Othello — II. 3.
FALSEHOOD.
Falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent,
Three things that women hold in hate.
Two Gentlemen of Verona — III. 2.
FEAR.
Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds
Where it should guard.
King Henry VI., Part 2d — V. 2.
Fear, and be slain; no worse can come, to fight:
And fight and die, is death destroying death;
Where fearing dying, pays death servile breath.
King Richard II. — III. 2.
FEASTS.
Small cheer, and great welcome, makes a merry feast.
Comedy of Errors — III. 1.
FILIAL INGRATITUDE.
Ingratitude! Thou marble-hearted fiend,
More hideous, when thou showest thee in a child,
Than the sea-monster.
King Lear — I. 4.
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child
Idem — I. 4.
FORETHOUGHT.
Determine on some course,
More than a wild exposure to each cause
That starts i’ the way before thee.
Coriolanus — IV. 1.
FORTITUDE.
Yield not thy neck
To fortune’s yoke, but let thy dauntless mind
Still ride in triumph over all mischance.
King Henry VI., Part 3d — III. 3.
FORTUNE.
When fortune means to men most good,
She looks upon them with a threatening eye.
King John — III. 4.
GREATNESS.
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 ripening, — nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do.
King Henry VIII. — III. 2.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness,
and some have greatness thrust upon them.
Twelfth Night — II. 5.
HAPPINESS.
O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness
through another man’s eyes.
As You Like It — V. 2.
HONESTY.
An honest man is able to speak for himself,
when a knave is not.
King Henry VI., Part 2d — V. 1.
To be honest, as this world goes, is to be
one man picked out of ten thousand.
Hamlet — II. 2.
HYPOCRISY.
Devils soonest tempt,
resembling spirits of light.
Love’s Labor Lost — IV. 3.
One may smile, and smile,
and be a villain.
Hamlet — I. 5.
INNOCENCE.
The trust I have is in mine innocence,
And therefore am I bold and resolute.
Troilus and Cressida — IV. 4.
INSINUATIONS.
The shrug, the hum, or ha; these petty brands,
That calumny doth use; —
For calumny will sear
Virtue itself: — these shrugs, these bums, and ha’s,
When you have said, she’s goodly, come between,
Ere you can say she’s honest.
Winter’s Tale — II. 1.
JEALOUSY.
Trifles, light as air,
Are, to the jealous, confirmations strong
As proofs of holy writ.
Othello — III. 3.
O beware of jealousy:
It is the green-eyed monster, which does mock
The meat it feeds on.
Idem.
JESTS.
A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear
of him that hears it.
Love’s Labor Lost — V. 2.
He jests at scars,
that never felt a wound.
Romeo and Juliet — II. 2.
JUDGMENT.
Heaven is above all; there sits a Judge,
That no king can corrupt.
King Henry VIII, — III. 1.
LIFE.
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 — V. 5.
We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
The Tempest — IV. 1.
LOVE.
A murd’rous, guilt shows not itself more soon,
Than love that would seem bid: love’s night is noon.
Twelfth Night — III. 2.
Sweet love, changing his property,
Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate.
King Richard II. — III. 2.
When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforced ceremony.
Julius Caesar — II. 2.
The course of true-love
never did run smooth.
Midsummer Night’s Dream — I. 1.
Love looks not with the eyes,
but with the mind.
Idem.
She never told her love, —
But let concealment, like a worm i’ th’ bud,
Feed on her damask check: 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?
Twelfth Night — II. 4.
But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit.
The Merchant of Venice — II. 6.
MAN.
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!
Hamlet — II. 2.
MERCY.
The quality of mercy is not strained:
it droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven,
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;
It blesses him that gives, and him that takes:
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
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.
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.
Merchant of Venice — IV. 1.
MERIT.
Who shall go about
To cozen fortune, and be honorable
Without the stamp of merit! Let none presume
To wear an undeserved dignity.
Merchant of Venice — II. 9.
MODESTY.
It is the witness still of excellency,
To put a strange face on his own perfection.
Much Ado About Nothing — II. 3.
MORAL CONQUEST.
Brave conquerors! for so you are,
That war against your own affections,
And the huge army of the world’s desires.
Love’s Labor’s Lost — I. 1.
MURDER.
The great King of kings
Hath in the table of his law commanded,
That thou shalt do no murder.
Take heed; for he holds vengeance in his band,
To hurl upon their heads thatbreak his law.
King Richard III. — I. 4.
Blood, like sacrificing Abel’s, cries,
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth.
King Richard II. — I. 1.
MUSIC.
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 motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.
Merchant of Venice — V. 1.
NAMES.
What’s in a name? that, which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet.
Romeo and Juliet — II. 2.
Good name, in man, and woman,
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.
Othello — III. 3.
NATURE.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
Troilus and Cressida — III. 3.
NEWS, GOOD AND BAD.
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.
Antony and Cleopatra — II. 5.
OFFICE.
’Tis the curse of service;
Preferment goes by letter, and affection,
Not by the old gradation, where each second
Stood heir to the first.
Othello — I. 1.
OPPORTUNITY.
Who seeks, and will not take when offered,
Shall never find it more.
Antony and Cleopatra — II. 7.
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.
Julius Caesar — IV. 3.
OPPRESSION.
Press not a falling man too far; ’tis virtue:
His faults lie open to the laws; let them,
Not you, correct them.
King Henry VIII. — III. 2.
PAST AND FUTURE.
O thoughts of men accurst!
Past, and to come, seem best; things present, worst.
King Henry IV., Part 2d — I. 3.
PATIENCE.
How poor are they, that have not patience! —
What wound did ever heal, but by degrees?
Othello — II. 3.
PEACE.
A peace is of the nature of a conquest;
For then both parties nobly are subdued,
And neither party loser.
King Henry IV., Part 2d — IV. 2.
I will use the olive with my sword:
Make war breed peace; make peace stint war; make each
Prescribe to other, as each other’s leech.
Timon of Athens — V. 5.
I know myself now; and I feel within me
A peace above all earthly dignities,
A still and quiet conscience.
King Henry VIII. — III. 2.
PENITENCE.
Who by repentance is not satisfied,
Is nor of heaven, nor earth; for these are pleased;
By penitence the Eternal’s wrath appeased.
Two Gentlemen of Verona — V. 4.
PLAYERS.
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.
As You Like It — II. 7.
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.
Hamlet — III. 2.
POMP.
Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?
And, live we how we can, yet die we must.
King Henry V. Part 3d — V. 2.
PRECEPT AND PRACTICE.
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<
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twenty what were good to be done, than be one of
twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may
devise laws for the blood; but a hot temper leaps
o’er a cold decree: such a bare is madness, the
youth, to skip o’er the meshes of good counsel,
the cripple.
The Merchant of Venice — I. 2.
PRINCES AND TITLES.
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:
So that, between their titles, and low name,
There’s nothing differs but the outward fame.
King Richard III. — I. 4.
QUARRELS.
In a false quarrel these is no true valor.
Much Ado About Nothing — V. 1.
Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just;
And he but naked, though locked up in steel,
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.
King Henry VI., Part 2d — III. 2.
RAGE.
Men in rage strike those that wish them best.
Othello — II. 3.
REPENTANCE.
Men shall deal unadvisedly sometimes,
Which after-hours give leisure to repent.
King Richard III. — IV. 4.
REPUTATION.
The purest treasure mortal times afford,
Is — spotless reputation; that away,
Men are but gilded loam, or painted clay.
A jewel in a ten-times-barred-up chest
I — a bold spirit in a loyal breast.
King Richard II. — I. 1.
RETRIBUTION.
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to scourge us.
King Lear — V. S.
If these men have defeated the law,
and outrun native punishment,
though they can outstrip men,
they have no wings to fly from God.
King Henry V. — IV. 1.
SCARS.
A sear nobly got, or a noble scar,
is a good livery of honor.
All’s Well that Ends Well — IV. 6.
To such as boasting show their scars,
A mock is due.
Troilus and Cressida — IV. 5.
SELF-CONQUEST.
Better conquest never can’st thou make,
Than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts
Against those giddy loose suggestions.
King John — III. 1.
SELF-EXERTION.
Men at some time are masters of their fates;
The fault is not in our stars,
But in ourselves.
Julius Caesar — I. 2.
SELF-RELIANCE.
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.
All’s Well that Ends Well — I. 1.
SILENCE.
Out of this silence, yet I picked a welcome;
