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Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare
ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
In the year thirteen hundred and something, the Countess of Rousillon was unhappy in her palace near the Pyrenees. She had lost her husband, and the King of France had summoned her son Bertram to Paris, hundreds of miles away.
Bertram was a pretty youth with curling hair, finely arched eyebrows, and eyes as keen as a hawk’s. He was as proud as ignorance could make him, and would lie with a face like truth itself to gain a selfish end. But a pretty youth is a pretty youth, and Helena was in love with him.
Helena was the daughter of a great doctor who had died in the service of the Count of Rousillon. Her sole fortune consisted in a few of her father’s prescriptions.
When Bertram had gone, Helena’s forlorn look was noticed by the Countess, who told her that she was exactly the same to her as her own child. Tears then gathered in Helena’s eyes, for she felt that the Countess made Bertram seem like a brother whom she could never marry. The Countess guessed her secret forthwith, and Helena confessed that Bertram was to her as the sun is to the day.
She hoped, however, to win this sun by earning the gratitude of the King of France, who suffered from a lingering illness, which made him lame. The great doctors attached to the Court despaired of curing him, but Helena had confidence in a prescription which her father had used with success.
Taking an affectionate leave of the Countess, she went to Paris, and was allowed to see the King.
He was very polite, but it was plain he thought her a quack. “It would not become me,” he said, “to apply to a simple maiden for the relief which all the learned doctors cannot give me.”
“Heaven uses weak instruments sometimes,” said Helena, and she declared that she would forfeit her life if she failed to make him well.
“And if you succeed?” questioned the King.
“Then I will ask your Majesty to give me for a husband the man whom I choose!”
So earnest a young lady could not be resisted forever by a suffering king. Helena, therefore, became the King’s doctor, and in two days the royal cripple could skip.
He summoned his courtiers, and they made a glittering throng in the throne room of his palace. Well might the country girl have been dazzled, and seen a dozen husbands worth dreaming of among the handsome young noblemen before her. But her eyes only wandered till they found Bertram. Then she went up to him, and said, “I dare not say I take you, but I am yours!” Raising her voice that the King might hear, she added, “This is the Man!”
“Bertram,” said the King, “take her; she’s your wife!”
“My wife, my liege?” said Bertram. “I beg your Majesty to permit me to choose a wife.”
“Do you know, Bertram, what she has done for your King?” asked the monarch, who had treated Bertram like a son.
“Yes, your Majesty,” replied Bertram; “but why should I marry a girl who owes her breeding to my father’s charity?”
“You disdain her for lacking a title, but I can give her a title,” said the King; and as he looked at the sulky youth a thought came to him, and he added, “Strange that you think so much of blood when you could not distinguish your own from a beggar’s if you saw them mixed together in a bowl.”
“I cannot love her,” asserted Bertram; and Helena said gently, “Urge him not, your Majesty. I am glad to have cured my King for my country’s sake.”
“My honor requires that scornful boy’s obedience,” said the King. “Bertram, make up your mind to this. You marry this lady, of whom you are so unworthy, or you learn how a king can hate. Your answer?”
Bertram bowed low and said, “Your Majesty has ennobled the lady by your interest in her. I submit.”
“Take her by the hand,” said the King, “and tell her she is yours.”
Bertram obeyed, and with little delay he was married to Helena.
Fear of the King, however, could not make him a lover. Ridicule helped to sour him. A base soldier named Parolles told him to his face that now he had a “kicky-wicky” his business was not to fight but to stay at home. “Kicky-wicky” was only a silly epithet for a wife, but it made Bertram feel he could not bear having a wife, and that he must go to the war in Italy, though the King had forbidden him.
Helena he ordered to take leave of the King and return to Rousillon, giving her letters for his mother and herself. He then rode off, bidding her a cold good-bye.
She opened the letter addressed to herself, and read, “When you can get the ring from my finger you can call me husband, but against that ‘when’ I write ‘never.’”
Dry-eyed had Helena been when she entered the King’s presence and said farewell, but he was uneasy on her account, and gave her a ring from his own finger, saying, “If you send this to me, I shall know you are in trouble, and help you.”
She did not show him Bertram’s letter to his wife; it would have made him wish to kill the truant Count; but she went back to Rousillon and handed her mother-in-law the second letter. It was short and bitter. “I have run away,” it said. “If the world be broad enough, I will be always far away from her.”
“Cheer up,” said the noble widow to the deserted wife. “I wash his name out of my blood, and you alone are my child.”
The Dowager Countess, however, was still mother enough to Bertram to lay the blame of his conduct on Parolles, whom she called “a very tainted fellow.”
Helena did not stay long at Rousillon. She clad herself as a pilgrim, and, leaving a letter for her mother-in-law, secretly set out for Florence.
On entering that city she inquired of a woman the way to the Pilgrims’ House of Rest, but the woman begged “the holy pilgrim” to lodge with her.
Helena found that her hostess was a widow, who had a beautiful daughter named Diana.
When Diana heard that Helena came from France, she said, “A countryman of yours, Count Rousillon, has done worthy service for Florence.” But after a time, Diana had something to tell which was not at all worthy of Helena’s husband. Bertram was making love to Diana. He did not hide the fact that he was married, but Diana heard from Parolles that his wife was not worth caring for.
The widow was anxious for Diana’s sake, and Helena decided to inform her that she was the Countess Rousillon.
“He keeps asking Diana for a lock of her hair,” said the widow.
Helena smiled mournfully, for her hair was as fine as Diana’s and of the same color. Then an idea struck her, and she said, “Take this purse of gold for yourself. I will give Diana three thousand crowns if she will help me to carry out this plan. Let her promise to give a lock of her hair to my husband if he will give her the ring which he wears on his finger. It is an ancestral ring. Five Counts of Rousillon have worn it, yet he will yield it up for a lock of your daughter’s hair. Let your daughter insist that he shall cut the lock of hair from her in a dark room, and agree in advance that she shall not speak a single word.”
The widow listened attentively, with the purse of gold in her lap. She said at last, “I consent, if Diana is willing.”
Diana was willing, and, strange to say, the prospect of cutting off a lock of hair from a silent girl in a dark room was so pleasing to Bertram that he handed Diana his ring, and was told when to follow her into the dark room. At the time appointed he came with a sharp knife, and felt a sweet face touch his as he cut off the lock of hair, and he left the room satisfied, like a man who is filled with renown, and on his finger was a ring which the girl in the dark room had given him.
The war was nearly over, but one of its concluding chapters taught Bertram that the soldier who had been impudent enough to call Helena his “kicky-wicky” was far less courageous than a wife. Parolles was such a boaster, and so fond of trimings to his clothes, that the French officers played him a trick to discover what he was made of. He had lost his drum, and had said that he would regain it unless he was killed in the attempt. His attempt was a very poor one, and he was inventing the story of a heroic failure, when he was surrounded and disarmed.
“Portotartarossa,” said a French lord.
“What horrible lingo is this?” thought Parolles, who had been blindfolded.
“He’s calling for the tortures,” said a French man, affecting to act as interpreter. “What will you say without ‘em?”
“As much,” replied Parolles, “as I could possibly say if you pinched me like a pasty.” He was as good as his word. He told them how many there were in each regiment of the Florentine army, and he refreshed them with spicy anecdotes of the officers commanding it.
Bertram was present, and heard a letter read, in which Parolles told Diana that he was a fool.
“This is your devoted friend,” said a French lord.
“He is a cat to me now,” said Bertram, who detested our hearthrug pets.
Parolles was finally let go, but henceforth he felt like a sneak, and was not addicted to boasting.
We now return to France with Helena, who had spread a report of her death, which was conveyed to the Dowager Countess at Rousillon by Lafeu, a lord who wished to marry his daughter Magdalen to Bertram.
The King mourned for Helena, but he approved of the marriage proposed for Bertram, and paid a visit to Rousillon in order to see it accomplished.
“His great offense is dead,” he said. “Let Bertram approach me.”
Then Bertram, scarred in the cheek, knelt before his Sovereign, and said that if he had not loved Lafeu’s daughter before he married Helena, he would have prized his wife, whom he now loved when it was too late.
“Love that is late offends the Great Sender,” said the King. “Forget sweet Helena, and give a ring to Magdalen.”
Bertram immediately gave a ring to Lafeu, who said indignantly, “It’s Helena’s!”
“It’s not!” said Bertram.
Hereupon the King asked to look at the ring, and said, “This is the ring I gave to Helena, and bade her send to me if ever she needed help. So you had the cunning to get from her what could help her most.”
Bertram denied again that the ring was Helena’s, but even his mother said it was.
“You lie!” exclaimed the King. “Seize him, guards!” but even while they were seizing him, Bertram wondered how the ring, which he thought Diana had given him, came to be so like Helena’s. A gentleman now entered, craving permission to deliver a petition to the King. It was a petition signed Diana Capilet, and it begged that the King would order Bertram to marry her whom he had deserted after winning her love.
“I’d sooner buy a son-in-law at a fair than take Bertram now,” said Lafeu.
“Admit the petitioner,” said the King.
Bertram found himself confronted by Diana and her mother. He denied that Diana had any claim on him, and spoke of her as though her life was spent in the gutter. But she asked him what sort of gentlewoman it was to whom he gave, as to her he gave, the ring of his ancestors now missing from his finger?
Bertram was ready to sink into the earth, but fate had one crowning generosity reserved for him. Helena entered.
“Do I see reality?” asked the King.
“O pardon! pardon!” cried Bertram.
She held up his ancestral ring. “Now that I have this,” said she, “will you love me, Bertram?”
“To the end of my life,” cried he.
“My eyes smell onions,” said Lafeu. Tears for Helena were twinkling in them.
The King praised Diana when he was fully informed by that not very shy young lady of the meaning of her conduct. For Helena’s sake she had wished to expose Bertram’s meanness, not only to the King, but to himself. His pride was now in shreds, and it is believed that he made a husband of some sort after all.
QUOTATIONS FROM SHAKESPEARE
ACTION.
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant
More learned than their ears.
Coriolanus – III. 2
ADVERSITY.
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
As You Like It – II. 1
That, Sir, which serves and seeks for gain,
And follows but for form,
Will pack, when it begins to rain,
And leave thee in the storm.
King Lear – II. 4
Ah! when the means are gone, that buy this praise,
The breath is gone whereof this praise is made:
Feast won-fast lost; one cloud of winter showers,
These flies are couched.
Timon of Athens – II. 2
ADVICE TO A SON LEAVING HOME.
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel: but, being in,
Bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment,
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not expressed in fancy: rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France, of the best rank and station,
Are most select and generous, chief in that.
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 ownself be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Hamlet – I. 3
AGE.
My May of life Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf:
And that which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses not loud, but deep, mouth-honor, breath,
Which the poor heart would feign deny, but dare not.
Macbeth – V. 3
AMBITION.
Dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. And I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality, that it is but a shadow’s shadow.
Hamlet – II 2
I charge thee fling away ambition;
By that sin fell the angels, how can man then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by ‘t?
Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee;
Corruption wins not more than honesty.
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,
To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not!
Let all the ends, thou aim’st at, be thy country’s,
Thy God’s, and truth’s.
King Henry VIII. – III. 2
ANGER.
Anger is like
A full-hot horse, who being allowed his way,
Self-mettle tires him.
King Henry VIII. – I. 1
ARROGANCE.
There are a sort of men, whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,
And do a willful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,
As who should say, “i am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!”
O! my Antonio, I do know of these
That therefore are reputed wise
For saying nothing, when, I am sure,
If they should speak, would almost dam those ears,
Which, hearing them, would call their brothers fools.
The Merchant of Venice – I. 1
AUTHORITY.
Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar?
And the creature run from the cur?
There thou might’st behold the great image of authority
a dog’s obeyed in office.
King Lear – IV. 6
Could great men thunder
As Jove himself does, Jove would ne’er be quiet,
For every pelting, petty officer
Would use his heaven for thunder: nothing but thunder-
Merciful heaven!
Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,
Splitt’st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak,
Than the soft myrtle! – O, but man, proud man!
Drest in a little brief authority -
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,
His glassy essence, – like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make the angels weep.
Measure for Measure – II. 2
BEAUTY.
The hand, that hath made you fair, hath made you good: the goodness, that is cheap in beauty, makes beauty brief in goodness; but grace, being the soul of your complexion, should keep the body of it ever fair.
Measure for Measure – III. 1
BLESSINGS UNDERVALUED.
It so falls out
That what we have we prize not to the worth,
Whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost,
Why, then we rack the value; then we find
The virtue, that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours.
Much Ado About Nothing – IV. 1
BRAGGARTS.
It will come to pass,
That every braggart shall be found an ass.
All’s Well that Ends Well – IV. 3
They that have the voice of lions, and the act of bares, are they not monsters?
Troilus and Cressida – III. 2
CALUMNY.
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,
thou shalt not escape calumny.
Hamlet – III. 1
No might nor greatness in mortality
Can censure ‘scape; back-wounding calumny
The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong,
Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue?
Measure for Measure – III. 2
CEREMONY.
Ceremony
Was but devised at first, to set a gloss
On faint deeds, hollow welcomes.
Recanting goodness, sorry ere ‘tis shown;
But where there is true friendship, there needs none.
Timon of Athens – I. 2
COMFORT.
Men
Can counsel, and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air, and agony with words:
No, no; ‘tis all men’s office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow;
But no man’s virtue, nor sufficiency,
To be so moral, when he shall endure
The like himself.
Much Ado About Nothing – V. 1
Well, every one can master a grief, but he that has it.
Idem – II
COMPARISON.
When the moon shone, we did not see the candle.
So doth the greater glory dim the less;
A substitute shines brightly as a king,
Until a king be by; and then his state
Empties itself, as does an inland brook
Into the main of waters.
Merchant of Venice – V. 1
CONSCIENCE.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Hamlet – III. 1
CONTENT.
My crown is in my heart, not on my head;
Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones,
Nor to be seen; my crown is called “content;”
A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy.
King Henry VI., Part 3d – III. 1
CONTENTION.
How, in one house,
Should many people, under two commands,
Hold amity?
King Lear – II. 4
When two authorities are set up,
Neither supreme, how soon confusion
May enter twixt the gap of both, and take
The one by the other.
Coriolanus – III. 1
CONTENTMENT.
‘Tis 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.
King Henry VIII. – II. 3
COWARDS.
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Julius Caesar – II. 2
CUSTOM.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat
Of habit’s devil, is angel yet in this:
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock, or livery,
That aptly is put on: Refrain to-night:
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy:
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either curb the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency.
Hamlet – III. 4
A custom
More honored in the breach, then the observance.
Idem – I. 4
DEATH.
Kings, and mightiest potentates, must die;
For that’s the end of human misery.
King Henry VI., Part 1st – III. 2
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.
Julius Caesar – II. 2
The dread of something after death,
Makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others we know not of.
Hamlet – III. 1
The sense of death is most in apprehension.
Measure for Measure – III. 1
By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death
Will seize the doctor too.
Cymbeline – V. 5
DECEPTION.
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul, producing holy witness,
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek;
A goodly apple rotten at the heart;
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
Merchant of Venice – I. 3
DEEDS.
Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o’erwhelm them to men’s eyes.
Hamlet – I. 2
How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds,
Makes deeds ill done!
King John – IV. 2
DELAY.
That we would do,
We should do when we would; for this would changes,
And hath abatements and delays as many,
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this should is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing.
Hamlet – IV. 7
DELUSION.
For love of grace,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul;
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place;
Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.
Hamlet – III. 4
DISCRETION.
Let’s teach ourselves that honorable stop,
Not to outsport discretion.
Othello – II. 3
DOUBTS AND FEARS.
I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confined, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.
Macbeth – III. 4
DRUNKENNESS.
Boundless intemperance.
In nature is a tyranny; it hath been
Th’ untimely emptying of the happy throne,
And fall of many kings.
Measure for Measure – I. 3
DUTY OWING TO OURSELVES AND OTHERS.
Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy
Rather in power, than use; and keep thy friend
Under thy own life’s key; be checked for silence,
But never taxed for speech.
All’s Well that Ends Well – I. 1
EQUIVOCATION.
But yet
I do not like but yet, it does allay
The good precedence; fye upon but yet:
But yet is as a gailer to bring forth
Some monstrous malefactor.
Antony and Cleopatra – II. 5
EXCESS.
A surfeit of the sweetest things
The deepest loathing to the stomach brings.
Midsummer Night’s Dream – II. 3
Every inordinate cup is unblessed,
and the ingredient is a devil.
Othello – II. 3
FALSEHOOD.
Falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent,
Three things that women hold in hate.
Two Gentlemen of Verona – III. 2
FEAR.
Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds
Where it should guard.
King Henry VI., Part 2d – V. 2
Fear, and be slain; no worse can come, to fight:
And fight and die, is death destroying death;
Where fearing dying, pays death servile breath.
King Richard II. – III. 2
FEASTS.
Small cheer, and great welcome, makes a merry feast.
Comedy of Errors – III. 1
FILIAL INGRATITUDE.
Ingratitude! Thou marble-hearted fiend,
More hideous, when thou showest thee in a child,
Than the sea-monster.
King Lear – I. 4
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child
Idem – I. 4
FORETHOUGHT.
Determine on some course,
More than a wild exposure to each cause
That starts i’ the way before thee.
Coriolanus – IV. 1
FORTITUDE.
Yield not thy neck
To fortune’s yoke, but let thy dauntless mind
Still ride in triumph over all mischance.
King Henry VI., Part 3d – III. 3
FORTUNE.
When fortune means to men most good,
She looks upon them with a threatening eye.
King John – III. 4
GREATNESS.
Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: To-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;
The third day, comes a frost, a killing frost;
And, – when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is ripening, – nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do.
King Henry VIII. – III. 2
Some are born great, some achieve greatness,
and some have greatness thrust upon them.
Twelfth Night – II. 5
HAPPINESS.
O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness
through another man’s eyes.
As You Like It – V. 2
HONESTY.
An honest man is able to speak for himself,
when a knave is not.
King Henry VI., Part 2d – V. 1
To be honest, as this world goes, is to be
one man picked out of ten thousand.
Hamlet – II. 2
HYPOCRISY.
Devils soonest tempt,
resembling spirits of light.
Love’s Labor Lost – IV. 3
One may smile, and smile,
and be a villain.
Hamlet – I. 5
INNOCENCE.
The trust I have is in mine innocence,
And therefore am I bold and resolute.
Troilus and Cressida – IV. 4
INSINUATIONS.
The shrug, the hum, or ha; these petty brands,
That calumny doth use; -
For calumny will sear
Virtue itself: – these shrugs, these bums, and ha’s,
When you have said, she’s goodly, come between,
Ere you can say she’s honest.
Winter’s Tale – II. 1
JEALOUSY.
Trifles, light as air,
Are, to the jealous, confirmations strong
As proofs of holy writ.
Othello – III. 3
O beware of jealousy:
It is the green-eyed monster, which does mock
The meat it feeds on.
Idem
JESTS.
A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear
of him that hears it.
Love’s Labor Lost – V. 2
He jests at scars,
that never felt a wound.
Romeo and Juliet – II. 2
JUDGMENT.
Heaven is above all; there sits a Judge,
That no king can corrupt.
King Henry VIII, – III. 1
LIFE.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Macbeth – V. 5
We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
The Tempest – IV. 1
LOVE.
A murd’rous, guilt shows not itself more soon,
Than love that would seem bid: love’s night is noon.
Twelfth Night – III. 2
Sweet love, changing his property,
Turns to the sourest and most deadly hate.
King Richard II. – III. 2
When love begins to sicken and decay,
It useth an enforced ceremony.
Julius Caesar – II. 2
The course of true-love
never did run smooth.
Midsummer Night’s Dream – I. 1
Love looks not with the eyes,
but with the mind.
Idem
She never told her love, -
But let concealment, like a worm i’ th’ bud,
Feed on her damask check: she pined in thought
And, with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
Twelfth Night – II. 4
But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit.
The Merchant of Venice – II. 6
MAN.
What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason!
How infinite in faculties! in form, and moving,
how express and admirable! in action, how like
an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the
beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!
Hamlet – II. 2
MERCY.
The quality of mercy is not strained:
it droppeth, as the gentle rain from heaven,
Upon the place beneath: it is twice bless’d;
It blesses him that gives, and him that takes:
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s,
When mercy seasons justice.
Consider this, -
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
Merchant of Venice – IV. 1
MERIT.
Who shall go about
To cozen fortune, and be honorable
Without the stamp of merit! Let none presume
To wear an undeserved dignity.
Merchant of Venice – II. 9
MODESTY.
It is the witness still of excellency,
To put a strange face on his own perfection.
Much Ado About Nothing – II. 3
MORAL CONQUEST.
Brave conquerors! for so you are,
That war against your own affections,
And the huge army of the world’s desires.
Love’s Labor’s Lost – I. 1
MURDER.
The great King of kings
Hath in the table of his law commanded,
That thou shalt do no murder.
Take heed; for he holds vengeance in his band,
To hurl upon their heads thatbreak his law.
King Richard III. – I. 4
Blood, like sacrificing Abel’s, cries,
Even from the tongueless caverns of the earth.
King Richard II. – I. 1
MUSIC.
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.
Merchant of Venice – V. 1
NAMES.
What’s in a name? that, which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet.
Romeo and Juliet – II. 2
Good name, in man, and woman,
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 name,
Robs me of that, which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.
Othello – III. 3
NATURE.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
Troilus and Cressida – III. 3
NEWS, GOOD AND BAD.
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.
Antony and Cleopatra – II. 5
OFFICE.
‘Tis the curse of service;
Preferment goes by letter, and affection,
Not by the old gradation, where each second
Stood heir to the first.
Othello – I. 1
OPPORTUNITY.
Who seeks, and will not take when offered,
Shall never find it more.
Antony and Cleopatra – II. 7
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:
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
Julius Caesar – IV. 3
OPPRESSION.
Press not a falling man too far; ‘tis virtue:
His faults lie open to the laws; let them,
Not you, correct them.
King Henry VIII. – III. 2
PAST AND FUTURE.
O thoughts of men accurst!
Past, and to come, seem best; things present, worst.
King Henry IV., Part 2d – I. 3
PATIENCE.
How poor are they, that have not patience! -
What wound did ever heal, but by degrees?
Othello – II. 3
PEACE.
A peace is of the nature of a conquest;
For then both parties nobly are subdued,
And neither party loser.
King Henry IV., Part 2d – IV. 2
I will use the olive with my sword:
Make war breed peace; make peace stint war; make each
Prescribe to other, as each other’s leech.
Timon of Athens – V. 5
I know myself now; and I feel within me
A peace above all earthly dignities,
A still and quiet conscience.
King Henry VIII. – III. 2
PENITENCE.
Who by repentance is not satisfied,
Is nor of heaven, nor earth; for these are pleased;
By penitence the Eternal’s wrath appeased.
Two Gentlemen of Verona – V. 4
PLAYERS.
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.
As You Like It – II. 7
There be players, that I have seen play, -
and heard others praise, and that highly, -
not to speak it profanely, that,
neither having the accent of Christians,
nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor man,
have so strutted, and bellowed,
that I have thought some of nature’s journeymen
had made men and not made them well,
they imitated humanity so abominably.
Hamlet – III. 2
POMP.
Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust?
And, live we how we can, yet die we must.
King Henry V. Part 3d – V. 2
PRECEPT AND PRACTICE.
