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- So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt. - William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "Hamlet", Act 4 scene 5
- This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands,-- This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. - William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "King Richard II", Act 2 scene 1
- The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
- William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "As You Like It", Act 5 scene 1
- The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 'T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre 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 sceptred 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. Therefore, Jew, Though justice be thy plea, consider this, That in the course of justice none of us Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy; And that same prayer doth teach us all to render The deeds of mercy. - William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "The Merchant of Venice", Act 4 scene 1
- Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love: Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues; Let every eye negotiate for itself And trust no agent. - William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "Much Ado about Nothing", Act 2 scene 1
- Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. - William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "The Tempest", Act 4 scene 1
- To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep: No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to,--'t is a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. - William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "Hamlet", Act 3 scene 1
- Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. - William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "Hamlet", Act 1 scene 3
- If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.
- William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "Twelfth Night", Act 3 scene 4
- If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! it had a dying fall: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour! - William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "Twelfth Night", Act 1 scene 1
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