Quotes to inspire and reflect

Our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous: Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man’s life is cheap as beast’s.

That sir which serves and seeks for gain, And follows but for form, Will pack when it begins to rain, And leave thee in the storm.

Nature in you stands on the very verge Of her confine.

Hysterica passio! down, thou climbing sorrow! Thy element’s below.

Fortune, good night, smile once more; turn thy wheel!

A good man’s fortune may grow out at heels.

I have seen better faces in my time Than stands on any shoulder that I see Before me at this instant.

Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child!

Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest.

Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, More hideous, when thou show’st thee in a child, Than the sea-monster.

[ Enter Edgar ]

Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides; Who covers faults, at last shame them derides.

Who in the lusty stealth of nature take More composition and fierce quality Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed, Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops.

I want that glib and oily art To speak and purpose not.

A still-soliciting eye.

Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow Upon the foul disease.

Come not between the dragon and his wrath.

Lear: So young, and so untender? Cordelia: So young, my lord, and true.

Mend your speech a little, Lest you may mar your fortunes.

Now, our joy, Although our last, not least.

Nothing will come of nothing.

In Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turban’d Turk Beat a Venetian and traduc’d the state, I took by the throat the circumcised dog, And smote him thus.

My love’s More richer than my tongue.

An honorable murderer, if you will; For nought I did in hate, but all in honor.

Here is my journey’s end, here is my butt, And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.

Curse his better angel from his side, And fall to reprobation.

She was as false as water.

Put out the light, and then put out the light: If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me; but once put out thy light, Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume.

It is the very error of the moon; She comes more near the earth than she was wont, And makes men mad.

And smooth as monumental alabaster.

This is the night That either makes me or fordoes me quite.

Every way makes my gain.

He hath a daily beauty in his life.

The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree, Sing all a green willow; Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee, Sing willow, willow, willow. 44

It makes us, or it mars us.

O heaven! that such companions thou’dst unfold, And put in every honest hand a whip To lash the rascals naked through the world.

And his unkindness may defeat my life, But never taint my love.

Patience, thou young and rose-lipp’d cherubin.

O thou weed! Who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne’er been born.

But, alas! to make me A fixed figure for the time of scorn To point his slow and moving finger at.

Steep’d me in poverty to the very lips.

Is this the noble nature Whom passion could not shake? whose solid virtue The shot of accident nor dart of chance Could neither graze nor pierce?

I understand a fury in your words, But not the words.

’Tis the strumpet’s plague To beguile many and be beguil’d by one.

But jealous souls will not be answer’d so; They are not ever jealous for the cause, But jealous for they are jealous; ’tis a monster Begot upon itself, born on itself.

Like to the Pontick sea, Whose icy current and compulsive course Ne’er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on To the Propontic and the Hellespont, Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace, Shall ne’er look back, ne’er ebb to humble love, Till that a capable and wide revenge Swallow them up.