Life and Existence

’Tis in my memory lock’d, And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

’Tis in my memory lock’d, And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

The chariest maid is prodigal enough If she unmask her beauty to the moon; Virtue itself ’scapes not calumnious strokes; The canker galls the infants of the spring Too oft before their buttons be disclos’d, And in the morn and liquid dew of youth Contagious blastments are most imminent.

Give it an understanding, but no tongue.

Hamlet: His beard was grizzled, no? Horatio: It was, as I have seen it in his life, A sable silver’d.

He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.

In my mind’s eye, Horatio.

A truant disposition.

Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral bak’d meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven Ere I had ever seen that day.

A beast, that wants discourse of reason.

O! that this too too solid 30 flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew; Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d His canon ’gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world.

But I have that within which passeth show; These but the trappings and the suits of woe.

Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not “seems.” ’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black.

Thou know’st ’tis common; all that live must die, Passing through nature to eternity.

Thou know’st ’tis common; all that live must die, Passing through nature to eternity.

The memory be green.

With one auspicious and one dropping eye, With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, In equal scale weighing delight and dole.

With one auspicious and one dropping eye, With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, In equal scale weighing delight and dole.

In the most high and palmy state of Rome, A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets.

Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy.

Oppress’d with two weak evils, age and hunger.

True is it that we have seen better days.

And so, from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, And then from hour to hour we rot and rot, And thereby hangs a tale.