William Shakespeare

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 worst is notSo long as we can say, "This is the worst."

Pray you now, forget and forgive.

Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground.

I would fain die a dry death.

Age cannot wither her, nor custom staleHer infinite variety.

Come unto these yellow sands,And then take hands:Courtsied when you have, and kiss'dThe wild waves whist.

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing.

Cursed be he that moves my bones.

Merrily, merrily shall I live now,Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

Strong reasons make strong actions.

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.

How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

When we are born, we cry, that we are comeTo this great stage of fools.

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

Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently. For in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

I will make a Star-chamber matter of it.

It is a familiar beast to man, and signifies love.

Why, then the world's mine oyster,Which I with sword will open.

This is the short and the long of it.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.

Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.

I thank God I am as honest as any man living that is an old man and no honester than I.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

A jest's prosperity lies in the earOf him that hears it, never in the tongueOf him that makes it.

My meaning in saying he is a good man, is to have you understand me that he is sufficient.

True is it that we have seen better days.

No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en;In brief, sir, study what you most affect.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,Or close the wall up with our English dead!In peace there's nothing so becomes a manAs modest stillness and humility;But when the blast of war blows in our ears,Then imitate the action of the tiger:Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.

A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!

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

We have seen better days.

Et tu, Brute!

I like this place, and willingly would waste my time in it.

For aught that I could ever read,Could ever hear by tale or history,The course of true love never did run smooth.

We must not make a scarecrow of the law, setting it up to fear the birds of prey, and let it keep one shape, till custom make it their perch and not their terror.

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,Who is already sick and pale with grief,That thou her maid are far more fair than she.

A kindOf excellent dumb discourse.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

O, woe is me,To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;It hath the primal eldest curse upon 't,A brother's murder.

Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unus'd.

A hit, a very palpable hit.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now; your gambols, your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.

The rest is silence.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Although the last, not least.

Her madness hath the oddest frame of sense, such a dependency of thing on thing, as e'er I heard in madness.

All the world's a stage,And all the men and women merely players.They have their exits and their entrances;And one man in his time plays many parts...

What may this mean, that thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon?

Ingratitude is monstrous, and for the multitude to be ingrateful, were to make a monster of the multitude.

A very little thief of occasion will rob you of a great deal of patience.

Though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod.

Do not cast away an honest man for a villain's accusation.

O fortune, fortune! All men call thee fickle.

He will give the devil his due.

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.

Art thou a man? thy form cries out thou art:Thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denoteThe unreasonable fury of a beast:Unseemly woman in a seeming man!Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!

I thank God I am not a woman, to be touched in so many giddy offences as He hath generally taxed their whole their whole sex withal.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;Coral is far more red than her lips' red...I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowThat music hath a far more pleasing sound.

Love's best habit is a soothing tongue.

There's no bottom, none, in my voluptuousness: Your wives, your daughters, your matrons and your maids, could not fill up the cistern of my lust.

Thy wish was father... to that thought.

Distribution should undo excess, and each man have enough.

To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength, gives in your weakness strength unto your foe.

The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.

Courage mounteth with occasion.

Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.

Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest; and despair most sits.

In time we hate that which we often fear.

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it isTo have a thankless child!

Oh, that way madness lies; let me shun that.

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

I will wear my heart upon my sleeveFor daws to peck at.

I am not merry; but I do beguileThe thing I am, by seeming otherwise.

Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul,But I do love thee! and when I love thee not,Chaos is come again.

Nothing will come of nothing.

Speak to me as to thy thinkings,As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughtsThe worst of words.

In false quarrels there is no true valor.

What seest thou elseIn the dark backward and abysm of time?

I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicatedTo closeness and the bettering of my mind.

He that is robb'd, not wanting what is stolen,Let him not know 't, and he's not robb'd at all.

Like oneWho having into truth, by telling of it,Made such a sinner of his memory,To credit his own lie.

O, now, for everFarewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!Farewell the plumed troop and the big warsThat make ambition virtue! O, farewell!Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,The royal banner, and all quality,Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!And, O you mortal engines, whose rude throatsThe immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit,Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone!

My libraryWas dukedom large enough.

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,Is the immediate jewel of their souls:Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;But he that filches from me my good nameRobs me of that which not enriches himAnd makes me poor indeed.

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!It is the green-eyed monster which doth mockThe meat it feeds on.

I understand a fury in your words,But not the words.

Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd meFrom mine own library with volumes thatI prize above my dukedom.

My salad days,When I was green in judgment.

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

Small to greater matters must give way.

Fill all thy bones with aches.

Full fathom five thy father lies;Of his bones are coral made;Those are pearls that were his eyes:Nothing of him that doth fadeBut doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.

He that commends me to mine own contentCommends me to the thing I cannot get.

The fringed curtains of thine eye advance.

'Tis neither here nor there.

From the still-vexed Bermoothes.

Since Cleopatra died,I have liv'd in such dishonour that the godsDetest my baseness.

There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple:If the ill spirit have so fair a house,Good things will strive to dwell with 't.

Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thoughtI summon up remembrance of things past,I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste.

I have not slept one wink.

I haveImmortal longings in me.

A very ancient and fish-like smell.

The game is up.

He that dies pays all debts.

No, 'tis slander,Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongueOutvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breathRides on the posting winds, and doth belieAll corners of the world.

Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments: love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds.

Where the bee sucks, there suck I;In a cowslip's bell I lie.

I have no other but a woman's reason:I think him so, because I think him so.

O, how this spring of love resemblethThe uncertain glory of an April day!

Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

But love is blind and lovers cannot seeThe pretty follies that themselves commit;For if they could, Cupid himself would blushTo see me thus transformed to a boy.

The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.

I dote on his very absence.

To be a well-flavored man is the gift of fortune, but to write or read comes by nature.

There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.

Though inclination be as sharp as will,My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,And, like a man to double business bound,I stand in pause where I shall first begin,And both neglect.

There is a history in all men's lives.

Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.

In peace there's nothing so becomes a manAs modest stillness and humility;But when the blast of war blows in our ears,Then imitate the action of the tiger:Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.

Have more than thou showest; Speak less than thou knowest.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend; And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry [economy].

Costly thy habit [dress] as thy purse can buy; But not expressed in fancy - rich, not gaudy. For the apparel oft proclaims the man.

The soul of this man is in his clothes.

It is not enough to help the feeble up, but to support him after.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

O that a man might know the end of this day's business ere it come!

So may he rest, his faults lie gently on him!

His life was gentle; and the elementsSo mixed in him, that Nature might stand up,And say to all the world, THIS WAS A MAN!

We are advertis'd by our loving friends.

Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word.

He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself.

Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.

If all the year were playing holidays; To sport would be as tedious as to work.

I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.

Blow, blow, thou winter windThou art not so unkind,As man's ingratitude.

What a deformed thief this fashion is.

I pray you bear me henceforth from the noise and rumour of the field, where I may think the remnant of my thoughts in peace, and part of this body and my soul with contemplation and devout desires.

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.

Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like a toad, though ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head.

How use doth breed a habit in a man.

Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood.

A wretched soul, bruised with adversity,We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;But were we burdened with like weight of pain,As much or more we should ourselves complain.

Be great in act, as you have been in thought.

I am not bound to please thee with my answers.

The peace of heaven is theirs that lift their swords, in such a just and charitable war.

I hate ingratitude more in a manthan lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,or any taint of vice whose strong corruptioninhabits our frail blood.

At Christmas I no more desire a roseThan wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth;But like of each thing that in season grows.

The sands are number'd that make up my life.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end.

Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge of thine own cause.

I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true 'The empty vessel makes the greatest sound'.

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility.

The trust I have is in mine innocence,and therefore am I bold and resolute.

In a false quarrel there is no true valour.

God bless thee; and put meekness in thy mind, love, charity, obedience, and true duty!

And since you know you cannot see yourself,so well as by reflection, I, your glass,will modestly discover to yourself,that of yourself which you yet know not of.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie.

It is meant that noble minds keep ever with their likes; for who so firm that cannot be seduced.

While thou livest keep a good tongue in thy head.

Do not, for one repulse, forego the purpose that you resolved to effect.

O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible,As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple.

How use doth breed a habit in a man!

Come not within the measure of my wrath.

That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man,If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.

If there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another: I hope, upon familiarity will grow more contempt.

We burn daylight.

Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.

The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted.

Thou art the Mars of malcontents.

We have some salt of our youth in us.

I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.

Your hearts are mighty, your skins are whole.

The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.

The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good.

This is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers.... There is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death.

Truth is truthTo the end of reckoning.

What's mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.

They say, best men are moulded out of faults,And, for the most, become much more the betterFor being a little bad.

He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat.

Friendship is constant in all other thingsSave in the office and affairs of love:Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;Let every eye negotiate for itselfAnd trust no agent.

Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much.

A man in all the world's new fashion planted,That hath a mint of phrases in his brain.

He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.

They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

When he is best, he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

Exit, pursued by a bear.

The little foolery that wise men have makes a great show.

Hereafter, in a better world than this,I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

I met a fool i' the forest,A motley fool.

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

Praising what is lostMakes the remembrance dear.

If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.

If music be the food of love, play on;Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,The appetite may sicken, and so die.That strain again! it had a dying fall:O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet soundThat breathes upon a bank of violets,Stealing and giving odour!

What's gone and what's past helpShould be past grief.

This England never did, nor never shall,Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror.

He hath eaten me out of house and home.

If all the year were playing holidays,To sport would be as tedious as to work.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things.

The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful dayIs crept into the bosom of the sea.

And many strokes, though with a little axe,Hew down and fell the hardest-timbered oak.

An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told.

True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings;Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.

The end crowns all,And that old common arbitrator, Time,Will one day end it.

Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.

'T is better to be lowly born,And range with humble livers in content,Than to be perked up in a glistering grief,And wear a golden sorrow.

Our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.

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

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?

What's in a name? That which we call a roseBy any other name would smell as sweet.

Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

Every man has his fault, and honesty is his.

Beware the ides of March.

Let me have men about me that are fat,Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

But, for my own part, it was Greek to me.

Cowards die many times before their deaths;The valiant never taste of death but once.Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,It seems to me most strange that men should fear;Seeing that death, a necessary end,Will come when it will come.

How many ages henceShall this our lofty scene be acted overIn states unborn and accents yet unknown!

There is a tide in the affairs of menWhich taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;Omitted, all the voyage of their lifeIs bound in shallows and in miseries.

For Brutus is an honourable man;So are they all, all honourable men.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.The evil that men do lives after them;The good is oft interred with their bones.

Yet do I fear thy nature;It is too full o' the milk of human kindness.

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

Each present joy or sorrow seems the chief.

Double, double toil and trouble;Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

The attempt and not the deedConfounds us.

By the pricking of my thumbs,Something wicked this way comes.Open, locks,Whoever knocks!

Out, damned spot! out, I say!

O, I am slain!

Lay on, Macduff,And damn'd be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"

A little more than kin, and less than kind.

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

Frailty, thy name is woman!

He is not great who is not greatly good.

It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; the thief doth fear each bush an officer.

We do not keep the outward form of order, where there is deep disorder in the mind.

Oh God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!

Their understandingBegins to swell and the approaching tideWill shortly fill the reasonable shoresThat now lie foul and muddy.

I wish you well and so I take my leave,I Pray you know me when we meet again.

Lady you bereft me of all words,Only my blood speaks to you in my veins,And there is such confusion in my powers.

Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none.

It is the mind that makes the body rich; and as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, so honor peereth in the meanest habit.

Mine honour is my life; both grow in one; take honour from me and my life is done.

Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.

How poor are they who have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees.

Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country, as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Virtue and genuine graces in themselves speak what no words can utter.

Your face, my thane, is as a book where menMay read strange matters...

Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.

I had rather have a fool make me merry, than experience make me sad.

Simply the thing that I am shall make me live.

Thy words, I grant are bigger, for I wear not, my dagger in my mouth.

O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.

For they are yet ear-kissing arguments.

I must be cruel only to be kind;Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.

Thou art all the comfort,The Gods will diet me with.

I pray thee cease thy counsel,Which falls into mine ears as profitlessas water in a sieve.

You cram these words into mine ears against the stomach of my sense.

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.

And thus I clothe my naked villainyWith old odd ends, stol'n forth of holy writ;And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.

The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.

Life is a tale told by an idiot -- full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

When griping grief the heart doth wound,and doleful dumps the mind opresses,then music, with her silver sound,with speedy help doth lend redress.

See first that the design is wise and just: that ascertained, pursue it resolutely; do not for one repulse forego the purpose that you resolved to effect.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;Omitted, all the voyage of their lifeIs bound in shallows and in miseries.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.

Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.

But to my mind, though I am native hereAnd to the manner born, it is a customMore honoured in the breach than the observance.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

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

Every man has business and desire,Such as it is.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!

The devil hath powerTo assume a pleasing shape.

The play's the thingWherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go.

I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

For 'tis the sport to have the engineerHoist with his own petard...

Let the coming hour overflow with joy, and let pleasure drown the brim.

So full of artless jealousy is guilt,It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

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

I must be cruel, only to be kind:Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.

Our doubts are traitors,And make us lose the good we oft might winBy fearing to attempt.

A plague o' both your houses!

Cry "Havoc," and let slip the dogs of war.

Life is as tedious as a twice-told taleVexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.

Is this a dagger which I see before me,The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.Art thou not, fatal vision, sensibleTo feeling as to sight? or art thou butA dagger of the mind, a false creation,Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

How comes it, that thou art then estranged from thyself?

That way madness lies.

We are not ourselves when nature, being oppress'd, commands the mind to suffer with the body.

Were such things here as we do speak about? Or have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?

Matter and impertinency mix'd! Reason in madness!

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow...And with some sweet oblivious antidoteCleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuffWhich weighs upon the heart?

Fetter strong madness in a silken thread.

A woman mov'd is like a fountain troubled, muddy,ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.

The ancient saying is no heresy, hanging and wiving goes by destiny.

[Marriage is] a world-without-end bargain.

Men are April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are may when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.

O, what may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

I will fasten on this sleeve of thine: thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine.

O curse of marriage, that we can call these delicate creatures ours, and not their appetites.

By this marriage, all little jealousies, which now seem great , and all great fears, which now import their dangers would then be nothing.

Though I want a kingdom, yet in marriage I may not prove inferior to yourself.

I have wedded her, not bedded her; and sworn to make the 'not' eternal.

If there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another...upon familiarity will grow more contempt.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,And broils root out the work of masonry,Nor Mars his sword nor wars quick fire shall burnThe living record of your memory.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thoughtI summon up remembrance of things past,I sigh the lack of many things I sought,And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste.

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death the memory be green.

I would forget it fain; But, O, it presses to my memory, like damned guilty deeds to a sinners mind.

O sovereign mistress of true melancholy.

The moist star, upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands.

The moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle that's curded by the frost from purest snow.

The fortune of us that are the moon's men doth ebb and flow like the sea, being governed, as the sea is, by the moon.

The moon, like to a silver bow, new-bent in heaven.

The moon's an arrant theif, and her pale fire she snatches from the sun.

Swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circled orb, lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

Ornament is but the guiled shore to a most dangerous sea.

I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

It is the very error of the moon: She comes more nearer earth than she was wont, and makes men mad.

There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on his outward parts.

Was ever book containing such vile matter so fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell in such a gorgeous palace!

He's loved of the distracted multitude, who like not in their judgement, but their eyes.

The fool multitude, that choose by show, not learning more than the fond eye doth teach.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair.

Gardener, for telling me these news of woe, pray God the plants thou graft'st may never grow.

Though it be honest, it is never good to bring bad news: give to a gracious message an host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell themselves when they be felt.

Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

The common herd.

If music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die.

The beast with many heads butts me away.

I can sing, and speak to him in many sorts of music.

Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gazeBy the sweet power of music: therefore the poetDid feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods;Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage,But music for the time doth change his nature.The man that hath no music in himself,Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.

Look on beauty, and you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight.

Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.

To know the cause why music was ordain'd! Was it not to refresh the mind of a man after his studies or his usual pain?

In sweet music is such art: killing care and grief of heart fall asleep, or hearing, die.

Show me a mistress that is passing fair, what doth her beauty serve but as a note where I may read who pass'd that passing fair?

Nature does require her times of preservation.

I do begin to have bloody thoughts.

Winter, which, being full of care, makes summer's welcome thrice more wish'd, more rare.

Come what come may,Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

Though music oft hath such a charm to make bad good, and good provoke to harm.

Under the greenwood tree who loves to lie with me ... Here shall he see no enemy but winter and rough weather.

In the spring time, the only pretty ring time, when birds do sing... sweet lovers love the spring.

Where the bee sucks, there suck I:In a cowslip's bell I lie;There I couch when owls do cry.On the bat's back I do flyAfter summer merrily.Merrily, merrily shall I live nowUnder the blossom that hangs on the bough.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

'Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud; but, God He knows, thy share thereof is small.

Why, this is very midsummer madness.

That time of year thou may'st in me behold,When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,-Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

Now is the winter of our discontentMade glorious summer by this son of York,And all the clouds that loured upon our houseIn the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

O, she is rich in beauty, only poor that, when she dies, with beauty dies her store.

Patience is sottish, and impatience does become a dog that's mad.

Those that she makes fair she scarce makes honest; and those that she makes honest she makes very ill-favouredly.

But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we'll not fail.

Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience.

How far your eyes may pierce, i cannot tell; striving to better, oft we mar what's well.

How much more doth beauty beauteous seem by that sweet ornament which truth doth give!

I do oppose my patience to his fury, and am arm'd to suffer with a quietness of spirit, the very tyranny and rage of his.

Had it pleas'd heaven to try me with affliction... I should have found in some place of my soul a drop of patience.

Sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

I am a man more sinn'd against than sinning.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind! Thou art not so unkind as Man's ingratitude.

Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?

Trust not him that has once broken faith.

Vows were ever brokers to defiling.

When he is best, he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is a little better than a beast.

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

I am constant as the northern star, of whose true fix'd and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.

Foolery... does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere.

My ventures are not in one bottom trusted, nor to one place.

I must be cruel, only to be kind.

But to my mind, though I am native here and to the manner born, it is a custom more honour'd in breach than the observance.

Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.

A stirring dwarf we do allowance give before a sleeping giant.

The common curse of mankind,-folly and ignorance.

The course of true love was never easy.

Purpose is but the slave to memory, of violent birth, but poor validity.

Conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

I know myself know; and I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.

To do a great right, do a little wrong.

Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers come to dust.

A man can die but once.

Ah, what a sign it is of evil life, where death's approach is seen so terrible!

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.

When beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

The sense of death is most in apprehension; and the poor beetle, that we tread upon, in corporal sufferance feels a pang as great as when a giant dies.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions.

If Love be rough with you, be rough with Love, prick Love for pricking, and you beat Love down.

When he shall die, 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.

There was a star danced, and under that was I born.

Do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.

The evil men do lives after them, the good is often interred with their bones.

Blow, wind! Come, wrack! At least we'll die with harness on our back.

Men at some time are the masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

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

There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.

Things without all remedy should be without regard: What's done is done.

Full fathom five thy father lies;Of his bones are coral made;Those are pearls that were his eyes:Nothing of him that doth fade,But doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.

A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

Things are neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so.

Let Hercules himself do what he may, the cat will mew, and dog will have his day.

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to heaven.

Though fortunes malice overthrow my state, my mind exceeds the compass of her wheel.

Fortune, that arrant whore, ne'er turns the key to the poor.

He must needs go that the devil drives.

O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!

[Drink] provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everyone else.

The world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open.

I am sure care's an enemy to life.

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.

I am wealthy in my friends.

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players.

If rough be love with you, be rough with love.

From this day forward until the end of the world...we in it shall be remembered...we band of brothers.

Love looks not with thine eyes, but with thine mind,Therefore is win'd Cupid painted blind.

No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity, but I know none, therefore am no beast.

Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.

I wasted time, now time doth waste me.

For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,Make tigers tame, and huge leviathansForsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.

When lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.

The expedition of my violent love outrun the pauser, reason.

Ask me no reason why I love you; for though Love use Reason for his physician, he admits him not for his counsellor.

But miserable most, to love unloved? This you should pity rather than despise.

Belike you thought our love would last too long, if it were chain'd together.

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.

My reason, the physician to my love, angry that his prescriptions are not kept, hath left me.

Love's reason's without reason.

If that the world and love were young,And truth in every shepherd's tongue,These pretty pleasures might me moveTo live with thee and be thy love.

Love is begun by time; and that I see in passages of proof, time qualifies the spark and fire of it. There lives within the very flame of love a kind of wick or snuff that will abate it.

Now my love is thaw'd; which, like a waxen image 'gainst a fire, bears no impression of the thing it was.

Even as one heat another heat expels, or as one nail by strength drives out another, so the remembrance of my former love is by a newer object quite forgotten.

Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.

When love begins to sicken and decay, it useth an enforced ceremony.

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,Men were decievers ever,-One foot in the sea and one on shore,To one thing constant never.

There's daggers in men's smiles.

His life was gentle, and the elements so mix'd in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world 'This was a man!'

What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.

A high hope for a low heaven: God grant us patience!

He is the half part of a blessed man,Left to be finished by such as she;And she a fair divided excellence,Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.

Every why hath a wherefore.

I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.

Men have marble, women waxen, minds.

His reasons are as two grains of wheat his in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.

Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my hearts core.

Do not banish reason for inequality; but let your reason serve to make the truth appear where it seems hid, and hide the false seems true.

Though men can cover crimes with bold stern looks, poor women's faces are their own faults' books.

Many that are not mad have, sure, more lack of reason.

Women may fall when there's no strength in men.

Men's vows are women's traitors!

Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.

A woman impudent and mannish grown is not more loathed than an effeminate man in time of action.

The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation; that away, men are but gilded loam or painted clay.

Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, the death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast.

O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her and be her sense but as a monument, thus in a chapel lying.

Have you not heard it said full oft, a woman's nay doth stand for naught.

A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once the benefit of sleep and do the effects of watching!

To be slow in words is a woman's only virtue.

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.

Women being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the walls.

How hard it is for women to keep counsel!

O sleep, O gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, that thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, and steep my senses in forgetfulness.

Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit, and look on death itself.

Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep!"- the innocent sleep.

Sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye, steal me awhile from mine own company.

Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye,And where care lodges, sleep will never lie;But where unbruised youth with unstuff'd brainDoth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.

Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments: love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove :O, no! it is an ever fixed mark.

Perdition catch my soul, but I do love thee! and when I love thee not, Chaos is come again.

Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.

For aught that I could ever read, could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth.

He that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache.

O, how this spring of love resembleth the uncertain glory of an April day!

Some cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.

Be check'd for silence, but never tax'd for speech.

Men of few words are the best men.

Talkers are no good doers; be assur'd we come to use our hands and not our tongues.

O, then, what graces in my love do dwell, that he hath turn'd a heaven unto hell!

Love is blind, and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit.

How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.

If love be blind, it best agrees with night.

What power is it which mounts my love so high, that makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?

I do not speak to thee in drink but in tears, not in pleasure but in passion, not in words only, but in woes also.

Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.

Things base and vile, holding no quantity, love can transpose to form and dignity.

Things are often spoke and seldom meant.

Speak low if you speak love.

Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.

I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at.

My tongue will tell the anger of mine heart, Or else my heart, concealing it, will break.

The hind that would be mated by the lion must die for love.

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

There is left us ourselves to end ourselves.

Though thou speak'st truth, methink thou speak'st not well.

Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boist'rous, and it pricks like a thorn.

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

Is it sin to rush into the secret house of death, ere death dare come to us?

Against self-slaughter there is a prohibition so divine that cravens my weak hand.

Love lacked a dwelling, and made him her place;And when in his fair parts she did abide,She was lodged and newly deified.

See what a ready tongue suspicion hath!

But the strong base and building of my love is as the very centre of the earth, drawing all things to it.

All fancy-sick she is and pale of cheer, with sighs of love, that costs the fresh blood dear.

By heaven, I do love: and it hath taught me to rhyme, and to be mekancholy.

But no perfection is so absolute, That some impurity doth not pollute.

She cannot love, nor take no shape nor project or affection, she is so self-endeared.

Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.

And ruin'd love when it is built anew,Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.

Bid Suspicion double-lock the door.

My heart suspects more than mine eye can see.

Make not your thoughts your prisons.

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes...Haply I think on thee, and then my state,Like to the lark at break of day arisingFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth bringsThat then I scorn to change my state with kings.

This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strangeThat even our loves should with our fortunes change.For 'tis a question left us yet to prove,Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.

The chameleon Love can feed on the air.

But thought's the slave of life, and life time's fool.

Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried.

My thoughts are whirled like a potter's wheel.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, to love that well which thou must leave ere long.

A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom and ever three parts coward.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeksWithin his bending sickle's compass come;Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.

My love admits no qualifying dross.

Call home thy ancient thoughts from banishment.

The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness And in the taste confounds the appetite.

Alas, their love may be call'd appetite. No motion of the liver, but the palate.

Time is like a fashionable hostThat slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,And with his arm outstretch'd, as he would fly,Grasps in the comer.

The whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his backWherein he puts alms for oblivion,A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour'dAs fast as they are made, forgot as soon as done.

The ostentation of our love, which, left unshown, is often left unloved.

Time's the king of men; he's both their parent, and he is their grave, and gives them what he will, not what they crave.

My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming;I love not less, though less the show appear:That love is merchandised whose rich esteemingThe owner's tongue doth publish every where.

Doubt that the stars are fire;Doubt that the sun doth move;Doubt truth to be a liar;But never doubt I love.

Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?

Nothing 'gainst Times scythe can make defence.

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; where little fear grows great, great love grows there.

Ruin has taught me to ruminate,That Time will come and take my love away.This thought is as a death, which cannot chooseBut weep to have that which it fears to lose.

The extreme parts of time extremely forms all causes to the purpose of his speed.

Love thrives not in the heart that shadows dreadeth.

Friendship is constant in all other thingsSave in the office and affairs of love:Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;Let every eye negotiate for itself,And trust no agent.

If they love they know not why, they hate upon no better ground, they hate upon no better a ground.

Against love's fire fear's frost hath dissolution.

Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.

The time is out of joint : O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!

I wasted time and now doth time waste me.

Short time seems long in sorrow's sharp sustaining.

But wonder on, till truth makes all things plain.

Truth will come to light ... at the length, the truth will out.

While you live tell truth and shame the devil.

They breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.

Truth is truth to the end of reckoning.

O God, that man should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!

But 'tis strange 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.

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily... is wasteful and ridiculous excess

They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they starve with nothing.

Can one desire too much of a good thing?

The better part of valour is discretion.

Against my soul's pure truth why labour you to make it wander in an unknown field?

When valour preys on reason, it eats the sword it fights with.

Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice: Then must you speak of one that loved not wisely but too well.

'Tis much he dares; and, to that dauntless temper of his mind, he hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour to act in safety.

Where nothing wants that want itself doth seek.

If wishes would prevail with me, my purpose should not fail with me.

Wishers were ever fools.

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; for the apparel oft proclaims the man.

The glass of fashion and the mould of form

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

Action is eloquence.

The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.

Best safety lies in fear.

Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.

In the night, imagining some fear, how easy is a bush suppos'd a bear!

His flight was madness: when our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors.

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs, not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, the marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe, become them with one half so good a grace as mercy does.

There is a devilish mercy in the judge, if you'll implore it, that will free your life, but fetter you till death.

Mercy is not itself, that oft looks so

Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!Or that the Everlasting had not fix'dHis cannon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitableSeem to me all the uses of this world!

Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp'd, doth burn the heart to cinders where it is.

Oft expectations fails, and most oft thereWhere most it promises; and oft it hitsWhere hope is coldest, and despair most fits.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

The miserable have no other medicine, but only hope.

It easeth some, though none it ever cured, to think their dolour others have endured.

A heavy heart bears not a nimble tongue.

As many arrows, loosed several ways, come to one mark... so may a thousand actions, once afoot, end in one purpose.

If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.

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.

If there were reason for these miseries, then into limits could I bind my woes.

How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!

What's done cannot be undone.

Sweet are the uses of adversity,Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;And this our life, exempt from public haunt,Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feelings as to sight?

A man I am cross'd with adversity.

Yet I do fear thy nature; it is too full o' the milk of human kindness.

Young in limbs, in judgement old.

Let me not live, after my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff of younger spirits.

You shall more command with years than with your weapons.

An old man is twice a child.

My salad days, when I was green in judgement, cold in blood.

Crabbed age and youth cannot live together.

There is no fettering of authority.

Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor; for 'tis the mind that makes the body rich

Cowards die many times before their deaths;The valiant never taste of death but once.

Poor and content is rich, and rich enough; but riches fineless is as poor as winter to him that ever that ever fears he shall be poor.

Present mirth hath present laughter; what's to come is still unsure.

A merry heart goes all the day, your sad tires in a mile-a.

Frame your mind to mirth and merriment, which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.

The old folk, time's doting chronicles.

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.

Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ.

My age is as a lusty winter, frosty, but kindly.

I hold ambition of so light a quality that is is but a shadow's shadow.

Virtue is choked with foul ambition.

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!

Thou hast nor youth nor age, but, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, dreaming on both.

Ambition, the soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than gain which darkens him.

Lowliness is young ambition's ladder,Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;But when he once attains the upmost round,He then unto the ladder turns his back,Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degreesBy which he did ascend

I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, and falls on the other.

How my achievements mock me!

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?

If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.

I do know of these that... only are reputed wise for saying nothing.

We know what we are, but not what we may be.

He takes false shadows for true substances.

What the great ones do, the less will prattle of

Gold is worse poison to a man's soul, doing more murders in this loathsome world, than any mortal drug.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,So do our minutes hasten to their end.

Our bodies are our gardens to which our wills are gardeners.

How ever do we praise ourselves, our fancies are more giddy and uniform, more longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, than women's are.

Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?Polonius: By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.Hamlet: Or like a whale?Polonius: Very like a whale.

Glory is like a circle in the water,Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,Till by broad spreading it disperses to naught.

Free from gross passion or of mirth or angerconstant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,garnish'd and deck'd in modest compliment,not working with the eye without the ear,and but in purged judgement trusting neither?Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs, Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes, Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall and a preserving sweet.

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;And if I die no soul will pity me:And wherefore should they, since that I myselfFind in myself no pity to myself?

BewareOf entrance to a quarrel; but being in,Bear't that the 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.

Time's glory is to calm contending kings, To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light, To stamp the seal of time in aged things, To wake the morn of sentinel the night, To wrong the wronger till he render right, To ruinate proud buildings with thy hour And smear with dust their glittering golden towers.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to dayTo the last syllable of recorded time,And all our yesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!Life's but a walking shadow, a poor playerThat struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more: it is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,This other Eden, demi-paradise,This fortress built by Nature for herselfAgainst infection and the hand of war,This happy breed of men, this little world,This precious stone set in the silver sea,Which serves it in the office of a wallOr as a moat defensive to a house,Against the envy of less happier lands,--This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.

The cloud-capp'd towers,the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on; and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep.

Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good;A shining gloss that vadeth suddenly;A flower that dies when first it 'gins to bud;A brittle glass that's broken presently:A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,Lost, vaded, broken, dead within the hour.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits, andAre melted into air, into thin air:And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuffAs dreams are made on; and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep.