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At Christmas I no more desire a rose Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth; But like of each thing that in season grows. -Love's Labour 's Lost. Act i. Sc. 1.
Topic: Shakespeare
Source: None
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Thou art the Mars of malcontents. -The Merry Wives of Windsor. Act i. Sc. 3.
Topic: Shakespeare
Source: None
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Most forcible Feeble. -King Henry IV. Part II. Act iii. Sc. 2.
Topic: Shakespeare
Source: None
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Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground. -The Tempest. Act i. Sc. 1.
Topic: Shakespeare
Source: None
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O shame, where is thy blush?
Topic: Shame
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Hamlet at III, iv)
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Mort de ma vie! all is confounded, all!
Reproach and everlasting shame
Sits mocking in our plumes.
Topic: Shame
Source: The Life of King Henry the Fifth (Dauphin at IV, v)
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He was not born to shame.
Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit;
For 'tis a throne where honor may be crowned
Sole monarch of the universal earth.
Topic: Shame
Source: Romeo and Juliet (Juliet at III, ii)
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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: Ships
Source: Antony and Cleopatra (Enobarbus at II, ii)
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In few, they hurried us aboard a bark,
Bore us some leagues to sea; where they prepared
A rotten carcass of a butt, not rigged,
Nor tackle, sail, nor mast; the very rats
Instinctively have quit it.
Topic: Shipwreck
Source: The Tempest (Prospero at I, ii)
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O, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer! a brave vessel
(Who had no doubt some noble creature in her)
Dashed all to pieces! O, the cry did knock
Against my very heart! Poor souls, they perished!
Topic: Shipwreck
Source: The Tempest (Miranda at I, ii)
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He had a fever when he was in Spain,
And when the fit was on him, I did mark
How he did shake. 'Tis true, this god did shake.
His coward lips did from their color fly,
And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world
Did lose his luster.
Topic: Sickness
Source: Julius Caesar (Cassius at I, ii)
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Is Brutus sick, and is it physical
To walk unbraced and suck up the humors
Of the dank morning? What, is Brutus sick,
And will he steal out of his wholesome bed
To dare the vile contagion of the night,
And tempt the rheumy and unpurged air,
To add unto his sickness?
Topic: Sickness
Source: Julius Caesar (Portia at II, i)
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Sick now? droop now? This sickness doth infect
The very lifeblood of our enterprise.
Topic: Sickness
Source: King Henry the Fourth, Part I (Hotspur at IV, i)
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My long sickness
Of health and living now begins to mend,
And nothing brings me all things.
Topic: Sickness
Source: The Life of Timon of Athens (Timon at V, i)
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Every night he comes
With musics of all sorts, and songs composed
To her unworthiness. It nothing steads us
To chide him from our eaves, for he persists
As if his life lay on't.
Topic: Singing
Source: All's Well That Ends Well (Widow Capilet at III, vii)
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Thou, thou, Lysander, thou hast given her rhymes
And interchanged love tokens with my child;
Thou hast by moonlight at her window sung
With feigning voice verses of feigning love.
Topic: Singing
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Egeus at I, i)
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O, she will sing the savageness out of a bear!
Topic: Singing
Source: Othello the Moor of Venice (Othello at IV, i)
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His tongue is now a stringless instrument;
Words, life, and all, old Lancaster hath spent.
Topic: Singing
Source: The Tragedy of King Richard the Second (Northumberland at II, i)
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Nay, now you are too flat,
And mar the concord with too harsh a descant.
Topic: Singing
Source: The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Lucetta at I, ii)
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She hath made me four and twenty nosegays for the
shearers--three-man songmen all, and very good ones; but they are
most of them means and bases, but one puritan amongst them, and
he sings psalms to hornpipes.
Topic: Singing
Source: The Winter's Tale (Clown at IV, iii)
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I have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth,
forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth seems to me
a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look
you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof
fretted with golden fire--why, it appeareth nothing to me but a
foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.
Topic: Sky
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Hamlet at II, ii)
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. . . For slander lives upon succession,
For ever housed where it gets possession.
Topic: Slander
Source: The Comedy of Errors (Baltzhazar at III, i)
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No, 'tis slander,
Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue
Outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath
Rides on the posting winds and doth belie
All corners of the world. Kings, queens. and states,
Maids, matrons, nay, the secrets of the grave
This viperous slander enters.
Topic: Slander
Source: Cymbeline (Pisanio at III, iv)
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And truly, I'll devise some honest slanders
To stain my cousin with. One doth not know
How much an ill word may empoison liking.
Topic: Slander
Source: Much Ado About Nothing (Hero at III, i)
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God knows I loved my niece,
And she is dead, slandered to death by villains,
That dare as well answer a man indeed
As I dare take a serpent by the tongue.
Boys, apes, braggarts, Jacks, milksops!
Topic: Slander
Source: Much Ado About Nothing (Antonio at V, i)
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Done to death by slanderous tongues
Was the Hero that here lies.
Topic: Slander
Source: Much Ado About Nothing (Claudio at V, iii)
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I will be hanged if some eternal villain,
Some busy and insinuating rogue,
Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office,
Have not devised this slander.
Topic: Slander
Source: Othello the Moor of Venice (Emilia at IV, ii)
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That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair;
The ornament of beauty is suspect,
A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
So thou be good, slander doth but approve
Thy worth the greater, being wooed of time;
For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.
Topic: Slander
Source: Sonnet LXX
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I am disgraced, impeached, and baffled here;
Pierced to the soul with slander's venomed spear,
The which no balm can cure but his heart-blood
Which breathed this poison.
Topic: Slander
Source: The Tragedy of King Richard the Second (Mowbray at I, i)
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If I can do it
By aught that I can speak in his dispraise,
She shall not long continue love to him.
Topic: Slander
Source: The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Proteus at III, ii)
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Base is the slave that pays.
Topic: Slavery
Source: The Life of King Henry the Fifth (Pistol at II, i)
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Nobly he yokes
A smiling with a sigh, as if the sigh
Was that it was for not being such a smile;
The smile mocking the sigh that it would fly
From so divine a temple to commix
With winds that sailors rail at.
Topic: Smiles
Source: Cymbeline (Arviragus at IV, ii)
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My tables--meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark.
Topic: Smiles
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Hamlet at I, v)
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Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort
As if he mocked himself and scorned his spirit
That could be moved to smile at anything.
Topic: Smiles
Source: Julius Caesar (Caesar at I, ii)
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You have seen
Sunshine and rain at once--her smiles and tears
Were like, a better way: those happy smilets
That played on her ripe lip seemed not to know
What guests were in her eyes, which parted thence
As pearls from diamonds dropped.
Topic: Smiles
Source: King Lear (Gentleman at IV, iii)
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If but a dozen French
Were there in arms, they would be as a call
To train ten thousand English to their side,
Or as a little snow, tumbled about,
Anon becomes a mountain.
Topic: Snow
Source: The Life and Death of King John (Pandulph at III, iv)
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Come, night; come, Romeo; come, thou day in night;
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow upon a raven's back.
Topic: Snow
Source: Romeo and Juliet (Juliet at III, ii)
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O that I were a mockery king of snow,
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke
To melt myself away in water drops!
Topic: Snow
Source: The Tragedy of King Richard the Second (King Richard at IV, i)
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Lawn as white as driven snow,
Cyprus black as e'er was crow,
Gloves as sweet as damask roses,
Masks for faces and for noses,
Bugle bracelet, necklace amber,
Perfume for a lady's chamber,
Golden quoifs and stomachers
For my lads to give their dears,
Pins and poking-sticks of steel,
What maids lack from head to heel.
Topic: Snow
Source: The Winter's Tale (Autolycus at IV, iv)
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Now, good Cesario, but that piece of song,
That old and antique song we heard last night.
Methought it did relieve my passion much,
More than light airs and recollected terms
Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times.
Come, but one verse.
Topic: Songs
Source: Twelfth Night, or, What You Will (Orsino, Duke of Illyria at II, iv)
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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.'
Topic: Sound
Source: The Life of King Henry the Fifth (Boy at IV, v)
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What's the business,
That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley
The sleepers of the house? Speak, speak!
Topic: Sound
Source: Macbeth (Lady Macbeth at II, iii)
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For you know, nuncle,
The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long
That it's had it head bit off by it young.
Topic: Sparrows
Source: King Lear (Fool at I, iv)
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O Cicero,
I have seen tempests when the scolding winds
Have rived the knotty oaks, and I have seen
Th' ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam
To be exalted with the threat'ning clouds;
But never till to-night, never till now,
Did I go through a tempest dropping fire.
Topic: Storms
Source: Julius Caesar (Casca at I, iii)
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Why, now blow wind, swell billow, and swim bark!
The storm is up, and all is on the hazard.
Topic: Storms
Source: Julius Caesar (Cassius at V, i)
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As far as could ken thy chalky cliffs,
When from thy shore the tempest beat us back,
I stood upon the hatches in the storm,
And when the dusky sky began to rob
My earnest-gaping sight of thy land's view,
I took a costly jewel from my neck,
A heart it was, bound in with diamonds,
And threw it toward thy land.
Topic: Storms
Source: King Henry the Sixth, Part II (Queen Margaret at III, ii)
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A little gale will soon disperse that cloud
And blow it to the source from whence it came.
Thy very beams will dry those vapors up,
For every cloud engenders not a storm.
Topic: Storms
Source: King Henry the Sixth, Part III (Clarence at V, iii)
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Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks. Rage, blow,
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, downed the cocks.
Topic: Storms
Source: King Lear (King Lear at III, ii)
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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: Storms
Source: Measure for Measure (Isabella at II, ii)
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Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
Making it momentany as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.
Topic: Storms
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Lysander at I, i)
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