Freedom

The mountain nymph, sweet liberty.

I struck the board, and cried, No more: I will abroad. What? shall I ever sigh and pine? My lines and life are free; free as the road, Loose as the wind, as large as store. Shall I be still in suit? Have I no harvest but a thorn To let me blood, and not restore What I have lost with cordial fruit? Sure there was wine Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn Before my tears did drown it; Is the year only lost to me? Have I no bays to crown it?

Flout ’em, and scout ’em; and scout ’em, and flout ’em; Thought is free. 59

I [Ariel] will be correspondent to command, And do my spiriting gently.

And liberty plucks justice by the nose.

I must have liberty Withal, as large a charter as the wind, To blow on whom I please.

Under the greenwood tree Who loves to lie with me, And turn his merry note Unto the sweet bird’s throat, Come hither, come hither, come hither: Here shall he see No enemy But winter and rough weather.

Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods More free from peril than the envious court?

Some to the common pulpits, and cry out, “Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!”

So every bondman in his own hand bears The power to cancel his captivity.

Where’er I wander, boast of this I can, Though banish’d, yet a true-born Englishman.

All places that the eye of heaven visits Are to a wise man ports and happy havens. Teach thy necessity to reason thus; There is no virtue like necessity. Think not the king did banish thee, But thou the king.

Must I not serve a long apprenticehood To foreign passages, and in the end, Having my freedom, boast of nothing else But that I was a journeyman to grief?

Now my soul hath elbow-room.

Why, headstrong liberty is lash’d with woe. There’s nothing situate under heaven’s eye But hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky.

He was of knyghthod and of fredom flour.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

Do not pay any attention to the rules other people make.… They make them for their own protection, and to hell with them.

Resist much, obey little.

As a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude.

Be in love with yr life Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind Blow as deep as you want to blow Write what you want bottomless from the bottom of the mind Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

If my body is enslaved, still my mind is free.

Excess of liberty, whether it lies in state or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery.

To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.