Ethics and Morality

’Tis mad idolatry To make the service greater than the god.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

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

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

Lay not that flattering unction to your soul.

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

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

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

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

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth; And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, With windlasses and with assays of bias, By indirections find directions out.

There’s ne’er a villain dwelling in all Denmark, But he’s an arrant knave.

Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, Unhousel’d, disappointed, unanel’d, No reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head.

Leave her to heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To prick and sting her.

But virtue, as it never will be mov’d, Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven, So lust, though to a radiant angel link’d, Will sate itself in a celestial bed, And prey on garbage.

Murder most foul, as in the best it is.

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.

Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, Bear ’t that th’ opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar; Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine, Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, And recks not his own rede. 31

All is not well; I doubt some foul play.

Foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.

To persever In obstinate condolement is a course Of impious stubbornness; ’tis unmanly grief: It shows a will most incorrect to heaven, A heart unfortified, a mind impatient.

Thou art not for the fashion of these times, Where none will sweat but for promotion.