Familiar Quotations

Excerpt

SHAKESPEARE.

TEMPEST.

Act i. Sc. 2.

There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple:
If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
Good things will strive to dwell with 't.

Act i. Sc. 2.

I will be correspondent to command,
And do my spiriting gently.

Act ii. Sc. 2.

A very ancient and fishlike smell.

Act ii. Sc. 2.

Misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows.

Act iv. Sc. 1.

Our revels row 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-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like an insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.

Act iv. Sc. 1.

We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Act i. Sc. 2.

I have no other but a woman's reason;
I think him so, because I think him so.

Act iv. Sc. 1.

To make a virtue of necessity.

Act iv. Sc. 4.

Is she not passing fair?

MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR.

Act ii. Sc. 1.

Faith, thou hast some crotchets in thy head now.

Act ii. Sc. 2.

Why, then the world's mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.

Act v. Sc. 1.

They say, there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death.

Act i. Sc. 1.

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 south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odor.

Act i. Sc, 3.

I am sure care's an enemy to life.

Act i. Sc. 5.

'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white
Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on.

Act ii. Sc. 3.

Dost thou think, because them art virtuous,
there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Act ii. Sc. 4.

She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm in the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,
And, with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat, like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief.

Act iii. Sc. 1.

O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful
In the contempt and anger of his lip!

Act iii. Sc. 1.

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.

Act iii. Sc, 2.

Let there be gall enough in thy ink; though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter.

Act iii. Sc. 4.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

Act i. Sc. 1.

Spirits are not finely touched
But to fine issues.

Act i. Sc. 5.

Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.

Act ii. Sc. 2.

O, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

Act ii. Sc. 2.

But man, proud man!
Drest in a little brief authority,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven
As make the angels weep.

Act iii. Sc. 1.

The miserable have no other medicine,
But only hope.

Act iii. Sc. 1.

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.

Act iii. Sc. 1.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot.

Act iv. Sc. 1.

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,
Seals of love, but sealed in vain.