Quotes to inspire and reflect

’Tis better to be lowly born, And range with humble livers in content, Than to be perk’d up in a glist’ring grief And wear a golden sorrow.

If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me; I had it from my father.

Go with me, like good angels, to my end; And, as the long divorce of steel falls on me, Make of your prayers one sweet sacrifice, And lift my soul to heaven.

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot That it do singe yourself.

The force of his own merit makes his way.

And my ending is despair, Unless I be reliev’d by prayer, Which pierces so that it assaults Mercy itself and frees all faults.

No man’s pie is freed From his ambitious finger.

This thing of darkness I Acknowledge mine.

Let us not burden our remembrances With a heaviness that’s gone.

Where the bee sucks, there suck I In a cowslip’s bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat’s back I do fly After summer merrily: Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

O brave new world, That has such people in’t!

I’ll break my staff, Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, And, deeper than did ever plummet sound, I’ll drown my book.

But this rough magic I here abjure.

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.

With foreheads villainous low.

Do not give dalliance Too much the rein.

A kind Of excellent dumb discourse.

Flout ’em, and scout ’em; and scout ’em, and flout ’em; Thought is free. 59

The isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep, Will make me sleep again.

For several virtues Have I lik’d several women.

Ferdinand: … Here’s my hand. Miranda: And mine, with my heart in’t.

Open-ey’d Conspiracy His time doth take.

’Ban, ’Ban, Ca—Caliban, Has a new master—Get a new man.

I’ the commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things; for no kind of traffic Would I admit; no name of magistrate; Letters should not be known; riches, poverty, And use of service, none; contract, succession, Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none; No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil; No occupation; all men idle, all; And women too, but innocent and pure. 58

What’s past is prologue.

Lest too light winning Make the prize light.

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.

The fringed curtains of thine eye advance.

Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made: Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. 57

Come unto these yellow sands, And then take hands: Curtsied when you have, and kiss’d— The wild waves whist,— Foot it featly here and there.

This music crept by me upon the waters, Allaying both their fury, and my passion, With its sweet air.

You taught me language; and my profit on ’t Is, I know how to curse: the red plague rid you, For learning me your language!

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

Knowing I lov’d my books, he furnish’d me, From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.

The very rats Instinctively have quit it.

My library Was dukedom large enough.

Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.

What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time?

By telling of it, Made such a sinner of his memory, To credit his own lie.

There’s time enough for that.

Prosperity’s the very bond of love, Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together Affliction alters.

I’ll queen it no inch further, But milk my ewes and weep.

The self-same sun that shines upon his court Hides not his visage from our cottage, but Looks on alike.

When you do dance, I wish you A wave o’ the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that.

Lawn as white as driven snow.

Daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty.

What you do Still betters what is done.

For you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep Seeming and savor all the winter long.