Quotes to inspire and reflect

Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honor’s at the stake.

How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unus’d.

We go to gain a little patch of ground That hath in it no profit but the name.

Diseases desperate grown By desperate appliance are relieved, Or not at all.

For ’tis the sport to have the enginer Hoist with his own petar.

I must be cruel only to be kind.

Refrain tonight; And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence: the next more easy; For use almost can change the stamp of nature.

For in the fatness of these pursy times Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul.

Confess yourself to heaven; Repent what’s past; avoid what is to come.

O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell, If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones, To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame When the compulsive ardor gives the charge, Since frost itself as actively doth burn, And reason panders will.

A king of shreds and patches.

See, what a grace was seated on this brow; Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command, A station like the herald Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill, A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man.

At your age The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble.

False as dicers’ oaths.

A rhapsody of words.

With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying; And now I’ll do ’t: and so he goes to heaven; And so I am reveng’d.

O! my offense is rank, it smells to heaven; It hath the primal eldest curse upon ’t; A brother’s murder!

’Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world.

I will speak daggers to her, but use none.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Why, let the stricken deer go weep, The hart ungalled play; For some must watch, while some must sleep: So runs the world away.

As Vulcan’s stithy.

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; When little fears grow great, great love grows there.

A man that fortune’s buffets and rewards Hast ta’en with equal thanks.

They are not a pipe for fortune’s finger To sound what stop she please. Give me that man That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart, As I do thee. Something too much of this.

O! woe is me, To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

No; let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee Where thrift may follow fawning.

The glass of fashion and the mould of form, The observ’d of all observers!

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh.

O! what a noble mind is here o’erthrown: The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword.

To the noble mind Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember’d.

With devotion’s visage And pious action we do sugar o’er The devil himself.

But I am pigeon-liver’d, and lack gall To make oppression bitter.

The play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.

Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?

What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her?

O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I.

One fair daughter and no more, The which he loved passing well.

Find out the cause of this effect, Or rather say, the cause of this defect, For this effect defective comes by cause.

Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.

That he is mad, ’tis true; ’tis true ’tis pity; And pity ’tis ’tis true.

More matter, with less art.

This is the very ecstasy of love.