|
|
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?
Topic: Appetite
Source: The Tragedy of King Richard the Second (Bolingbroke at I, iii)
|
With these shreds
They vented their complainings, which being answered
And a petition granted them, a strange one,
To break the heart of generosity,
And make bold power look pale, they threw their caps
As they would hang them on the horns o' th' moon,
Shouting their emulation.
Topic: Applause
Source: Coriolanus (Marcius at I, i)
|
If thou couldst, doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud you again.
Topic: Applause
Source: Macbeth (Macbeth at V, iii)
|
I'll privily away; I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes;
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and aves vehement,
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion
That does not affect it.
Topic: Applause
Source: Measure for Measure (Vincentio, the Duke at I, i)
|
Such comfort as do lusty young men feel
When well-apparelled April on the heel
Of limping Winter treads, even such delight
Among fresh fennel buds shall you this night
Inherit at my house.
Topic: April
Source: Romeo and Juliet (Capulet at I, ii)
|
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leapt with him;
Yet nor the lays of birds, not the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odor and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
Topic: April
Source: Sonnet XCVIII
|
Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas
Of wheat, rye, barley, fetches, oats, and pease;
Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep,
And flat meads thatched with stover, them to keep;
Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims,
Which spongy April at thy hest betrims
To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom groves,
Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,
Being lasslorn; thy pole-clipt vineyard;
And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky-hard,
Where thou thyself dost air--the queen o' th' sky,
Whose wat-ry arch and messenger am I,
Bids thee leave these, and with her sovereign grace,
Here on this grass-plot, in this very place,
To come and sport: her peacocks fly amain.
Approach, rich Ceres, her to entertain.
Topic: April
Source: The Tempest (Iris at IV, i)
|
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
Topic: Argument
Source: None
|
My lord, they say five moons were seen to-night--
Four fixed, and the fifth did whirl about
The other four in wondrous motion.
Topic: Astronomy
Source: The Life and Death of King John (Hubert at IV, ii)
|
These earthly godfathers of heaven's light,
That give a name to every fixed star,
Have no more profit of their shining nights
Than those that walk and wot not what they are.
Topic: Astronomy
Source: Love's Labor's Lost (Berowne at I, i)
|
When thou cam'st first,
Thou strok'st me and made much of me; wouldst give me
Water with berries in't; and teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night; and then I loved thee
And showed thee all the qualities o' th' isle,
The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile.
Topic: Astronomy
Source: The Tempest (Caliban at I, ii)
|
There's some ill planet reigns.
I must be patient till the heavens look
With an aspect more favorable.
Topic: Astronomy
Source: The Winter's Tale (Hermione at II, i)
|
Well, I must be patient; there is no fettering of authority.
Topic: Authority
Source: All's Well That Ends Well (Parolles at II, iii)
|
Shall remain!
Hear you this Triton of the minnows? Mark you
His absolute 'shall'?
Topic: Authority
Source: Coriolanus (Coriolanus at III, i)
|
Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? . . . And the
creature run from the cur. There thou mightst behold the great
image of authority--a dog's obeyed in office.
Topic: Authority
Source: King Lear (King Lear at IV, vi)
|
Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in live. Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.
Topic: Authority
Source: Macbeth (Angus at V, ii)
|
Thus can the demigod Authority
Make us pay down for our offense by weight
The words of heaven; on whom it will, it will,
On whom it will not, so: yet still 'tis just.
Topic: Authority
Source: Measure for Measure (Claudio at I, ii)
|
Merciful heaven,
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
Splits the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle; but man, proud man,
Dressed 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 makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
would all themselves laugh mortal.
Topic: Authority
Source: Measure for Measure (Isabella at II, ii)
|
He seems to be of great authority. Close with him, give him
gold; and though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft led
by the nose with gold.
Topic: Authority
Source: The Winter's Tale (Clown at IV, iv)
|
I had rather be a kitten and cry mew
Than one of these same metre ballet-mongers.
Topic: Ballads
Source: King Henry the Fourth, Part I (Hotspur at III, i)
|
I love a ballad but even too well if it be doleful matter merrily
set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.
Topic: Ballads
Source: The Winter's Tale (Clown at IV, iv)
|
Therefore doth heaven divide
The state of man in divers functions,
Setting endeavor in continual motion;
To which is fixed as an aim or butt
Obedience; for so work the honeybees,
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king, and officers of sorts,
Where some like magistrates correct at home,
Others like merchants venture trade abroad,
Others like soldiers armed in their stings
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds,
Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor,
Who, busied in his majesties, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold,
The civil citizens kneading up the honey,
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,
The sad-eyed justice with his surly hum
Delivering o'er to executors pale
The lazy yawning drone.
Topic: Bees
Source: The Life of King Henry the Fifth (Canterbury at I, ii)
|
To apprehend thus
Draws us a profit from all things we see,
And often, to our comfort, shall we find
The sharded beetle in a safer hold
Than is the full-winged eagle.
Topic: Beetles
Source: Cymbeline (Belarius at III, iii)
|
The sense of death is most in apprehension,
And the poor beetle that we tread upon
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.
Topic: Beetles
Source: Measure for Measure (Isabella at III, i)
|
The sense of death is most in apprehension.
Topic: Beetles
Source: Measure for Measure (Isabella at III, i)
|
Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks, but I thank you; and
sure, dear friends, my thanks are too dear a halfpenny.
Topic: Beggary
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Hamlet at II, ii)
|
It needs not nor it boots thee not, proud queen,
Unless the adage must be verified,
That beggars mounted run their horse to death.
Topic: Beggary
Source: King Henry the Sixth, Part III (Plantagenet, Duke of York at I, iv)
|
Not that I have the power to clutch my hand
When his fair angels would salute by palm,
But for my hand, as unattempted yet,
Like a poor beggar, raileth on the rich.
Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail
And say there is no sin but to be rich;
And being rich, my virtue then shall be
To say there is no vice but beggary.
Topic: Beggary
Source: The Life and Death of King John (Bastard at II, i)
|
I see, sir, you are liberal in offers.
You taught me first to beg, and now methinks
You teach me how a beggar should be answered.
Topic: Beggary
Source: The Merchant of Venice (Portia at IV, i)
|
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
Topic: Beginnings
Source: Macbeth (Macbeth at III, ii)
|
Thou marvell'st at my words, but hold thee still;
Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.
Topic: Beginnings
Source: Macbeth (Macbeth at III, ii)
|
To show our simple skill,
That is the true beginning of our end.
Topic: Beginnings
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream (prologue at V, i)
|
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That sucked the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason
Like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh,
That unmatched form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy.
Topic: Bells
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Ophelia at III, i)
|
Then get thee gone and dig my grave thyself,
And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear
That thou are crowned, not that I am dead.
Topic: Bells
Source: King Henry the Fourth, Part II (King Henry at IV, v)
|
Et tu, Brute!
Topic: Betrayal
Source: None
|
I heard a bird so sing,
Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the king.
Topic: Birds
Source: King Henry the Fourth, Part II (Lancaster at V, v)
|
The woosel cock so black of hue,
With orange-tawny bill,
The throstle with his note so true,
The wren with little quill--
. . . .
The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,
The plain-song cuckoo grey,
Whose note full many a man doth mark,
And dares not answer nay.
Topic: Birds
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Bottom at III, i)
|
The benediction of these covering heavens
Fall on their heads like dew, for they are worthy
To inlay heaven with stars.
Topic: Blessings
Source: Cymbeline (Belarius at V, v)
|
He that is strucken blind cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.
Topic: Blindness
Source: Romeo and Juliet (Romeo at I, i)
|
I will go wash;
And when my face is fair, you shall perceive
Whether I blush or no.
Topic: Blushes
Source: Coriolanus (Coriolanus at I, ix)
|
I ask, that I might waken reverence,
And bid the cheek be ready with a blush
Modest as morning when she coldly eyes
The youthful Phoebus,
Which is that god in office, guiding men?
Topic: Blushes
Source: The History of Troilus and Cressida (Aeneas at I, iii)
|
Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite,
Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes,
That banish what they sue for: redeem thy brother
By yielding up thy body to my will,
Or else he must not only die the death,
But thy unkindess shall his death draw out
To ling'ring sufferance.
Topic: Blushes
Source: Measure for Measure (Angelo at II, iv)
|
I have marked
A thousand blushing apparitions
To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames
In angel whiteness beat away those blushes,
And in her eye there hath appeared a fire
To burn the errors that these princes hold
Against her maiden truth.
Topic: Blushes
Source: Much Ado About Nothing (Friar Francis at IV, i)
|
Yet will she blush, here be it said,
To bear her secrets so bewrayed.
Topic: Blushes
Source: The Passionate Pilgrim (XVIII, l. 53), a poem of doubtful authenticity
|
His kindled duty kindled her mistrust,
That two red fires in both faces blazed.
She thought he blushed as knowing Tarquin's lust,
And, blushing with him, wistly on him gazed;
Her earnest eye did make him more amazed.
Topic: Blushes
Source: The Rape of Lucrece (l. 1,352)
|
Where now I have no one to blush with me,
To cross their arms and hang their heads with mine,
To mask their brows and hide their infamy;
But I alone, alone must sit and pine,
Seasoning the earth with show'rs of silver brine,
Mingling my talk with tears, my grief with groans,
Poor wasting monuments of lasting moans.
Topic: Blushes
Source: The Rape of Lucrece (l. 792)
|
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes.
Topic: Boating
Source: Antony and Cleopatra (Enobarbus at II, ii)
|
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulleth edge of husbandry.
Topic: Borrowing
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Polonius at I, iii)
|
Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
Topic: Borrowing
Source: None
|
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief.
Topic: Brevity
Source: None
|
|
