Ethics and Morality

And simple truth miscall’d simplicity, And captive good attending captain ill.

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud; Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud. All men make faults.

Few love to hear the sins they love to act.

His nature is too noble for the world: He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, Or Jove for ’s power to thunder. His heart’s his mouth: What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent. 52

Men’s judgments are A parcel of their fortunes, and things outward Do draw the inward quality after them, To suffer all alike.

I have not kept my square, but that to come Shall all be done by the rule.

No worse a husband than the best of men.

Good now, play one scene Of excellent dissembling, and let it look Like perfect honor.

To show an unfelt sorrow is an office Which the false man does easy.

Away, and mock the time with fairest show: False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under ’t.

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promis’d. Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness 49 To catch the nearest way.

The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top full Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood, Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers.

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray ’s In deepest consequence.

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us.

Get thee glass eyes; And, like a scurvy politician, seem To see the things thou dost not.

Through tatter’d clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furr’d gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw does pierce it.

Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile; Filths savor but themselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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