Quotes to inspire and reflect

Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintops.

Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy.

Unless philosophy can make a Juliet.

Upon his brow shame is asham’d to sit.

Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish sun.

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Towards Phoebus’ lodging.

O! I am Fortune’s fool.

They have made worms’ meat of me.

Therefore love moderately; long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.

Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.

These violent delights have violent ends.

Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye, And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied; And vice sometime’s by action dignified.

And yet no further than a wanton’s bird, Who lets it hop a little from her hand, Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, And with a silk thread plucks it back again, So loving-jealous of his liberty.

How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night, Like softest music to attending ears!

To lure this tassel-gentle back again.

Love goes toward love, as schoolboys from their books; But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.

It is too rash, too unadvis’d, too sudden; Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be Ere one can say it lightens.

This bud of love, by summer’s ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

Romeo: Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops— Juliet: O! swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

Or, if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self, Which is the god of my idolatry.

In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond.

Than those that have more cunning to be strange.

For stony limits cannot hold love out.

They say, Jove laughs.

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? 12 Deny thy father, and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

She speaks, yet she says nothing.

See! how she leans her cheek upon her hand: O! that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek.

He jests at scars, that never felt a wound. But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!

Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim When King Cophetua lov’d the beggarmaid.

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear; Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!

My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late!

For you and I are past our dancing days. 11

Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.

We burn daylight.

O! then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you!… She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the forefinger of an alderman, Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.

For I am proverb’d with a grandsire phrase.

I will make thee think thy swan a crow.

One fire burns out another’s burning, One pain is lessen’d by another’s anguish.

Saint-seducing gold.

A pair of star-cross’d lovers.

If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber’d here While these visions did appear.

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve; Lovers, to bed; ’tis almost fairy time.

The true beginning of our end. 10

But all the story of the night told over, And all their minds transfigur’d so together, More witnesseth than fancy’s images, And grows to something of great constancy, But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

Very tragical mirth.

My Oberon! what visions have I seen! Methought I was enamor’d of an ass.