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Methinks I am a prophet new inspired
And thus, expiring, do foretell of him:
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last,
For violent fires soon burn out themselves;
Small show'rs last long, but sudden storms are short;
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes;
With eager feeding doth choke the feeder;
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant,
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
Topic: Storms
Source: The Tragedy of King Richard the Second (Gaunt at II, i)
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When clouds are seen wise men put on their cloaks;
When great leaves fall then winter is at hand.
Topic: Storms
Source: The Tragedy of King Richard the Third (Third Citizen at II, iii)
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When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks;
When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand;
When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?
Untimely storms makes men expect a dearth.
Topic: Storms
Source: The Tragedy of King Richard the Third (Third Citizen at II, iii)
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But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
Topic: Story Telling
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Ghost at I, v)
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His eye begets occasion for his wit;
For every object that the one doth catch
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest,
Which his fair tongue, conceit's expositor,
Delivers in such apt and gracious words,
That aged ears play truant at his tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished,
So sweet and voluble is his discourse.
Topic: Story Telling
Source: Love's Labor's Lost (Rosaline at II, i)
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Out of their saddles into the dirt--and thereby hangs a tale.
Topic: Story Telling
Source: The Taming of the Shrew (Grumio at IV, i)
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In that day's feats,
When he might act the woman in the scene,
He prov'd best man i' th' field, and for his meed
Was brow-bound with the oak.
Topic: Strength
Source: Coriolanus (Cominius at II, ii)
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O, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.
Topic: Strength
Source: Measure for Measure (Isabella at II, ii)
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Robust grass endures mighty winds; loyal ministers emerge through
ordeal.
Topic: Strength
Source: Measure for Measure (Isabella at II, ii)
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O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
Topic: Strength
Source: None
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Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.
Topic: Students
Source: As You Like It (Jaques at II, vii)
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From his cradle
He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one,
Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading;
Lofty and sour to them that loved him not,
But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer.
Topic: Students
Source: The Life of King Henry the Eighth (Griffith at IV, ii)
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I'll talk a word with this same learned Theban.
What is your study?
Topic: Study
Source: King Lear (King Lear at II. vi)
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(Berowne:) What is the end of study, let me know?
(King:) What, that to know which else we should not know.
(Berowne:) Things hid and barred, you mean, from common sense?
(King:) Ay, that is study's godlike recompense.
Topic: Study
Source: Love's Labor's Lost (Berowne & King Ferdinand at I, i)
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So study evermore is overshot.
While it doth study to have what it would,
It doth forget to do the thing it should;
And when it hath the thing it hunteth most,
'Tis won as towns with fire; so won, so lost.
Topic: Study
Source: Love's Labor's Lost (Berowne at I, i)
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Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,
That will not be deep-searched with saucy looks:
Small have continual plodders ever won,
Save base authority from others' books.
Topic: Study
Source: Love's Labor's Lost (Berowne at I, i)
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To climb steep hills requires slow pace at first.
Topic: Success
Source: None
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Oh, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer!
Topic: Suffering
Source: The Tempest (Miranda at I, ii)
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Bravest at the last,
She levelled at our purposes, and being royal,
Took her own way.
Topic: Suicide
Source: Antony and Cleopatra (Octavius Caesar at V, ii)
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Against self-slaughter
There is a prohibition so divine
That cravens my weak hand.
Topic: Suicide
Source: Cymbeline (Imogen at III, iv)
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For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?
Topic: Suicide
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Hamlet at III, i)
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And the more pity that great folk should have count'nance in this
world to drown or hang themselves more than their even-Christen.
Topic: Suicide
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Clown at V, i)
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Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life
Cuts off so many years of fearing death.
Topic: Suicide
Source: Julius Caesar (Casca at III, i)
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You ever-gentle gods, take my breath from me;
Let not my worser spirit tempt me again
To die before you please.
Topic: Suicide
Source: King Lear (Gloucester at IV, vi)
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Did he so often lodge in open field,
In winter's cold and summer's parching heat,
To conquer France, his true inheritance?
Topic: Summer
Source: King Henry the Sixth, Part II (Gloucester at I, i)
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These are the forgeries of jealousy;
And never, since the middle summer's spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport.
Topic: Summer
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Titania at II, i)
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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.
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So ling lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Topic: Summer
Source: Sonnet XVIII
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Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York;
And all the clouds that lowered upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Topic: Summer
Source: The Tragedy of King Richard the Third (King Richard at I, i)
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O God! methinks it were a happy life
To be no better than a homely swain;
To sit upon a hill, as I do now,
To carve out dials, quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes, how they run--
How many makes the hour full complete,
How many hours brings about the day,
How many days will finish up the year,
How many years a mortal man may live;
When this is known, then to divide the times--
So many hours must I tend my flock,
So many hours must I take my rest,
So many hours must I contemplate,
So many hours must I sport myself;
So many days my ewes have been with young,
So many weeks ere the poor fools will ean,
So many months ere I shall shear the fleece.
So minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years,
Passed over to the end they were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
Ah, what a life were this!
Topic: Sun Dial Mottoes
Source: King Henry the Sixth, Part III (King Henry at II, iii)
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The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,
Writ in remembrance more than things long past.
Topic: Sunset
Source: The Tragedy of King Richard the Second (Gaunt at II, i)
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When clouds are seen wise men put on their cloaks;
When great leaves fall then winter is at hand.
Topic: Sunset
Source: The Tragedy of King Richard the Third (Third Citizen at II, iii)
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When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks;
When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand;
When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?
Untimely storms makes men expect a dearth.
Topic: Sunset
Source: The Tragedy of King Richard the Third (Third Citizen at II, iii)
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All is not well.
I doubt some foul play. Would the night were come!
Till then sit still, my soul. Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.
Topic: Suspicion
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Hamlet at I, ii)
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Would he were fatter! But I fear him not.
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius.
Topic: Suspicion
Source: Julius Caesar (Caesar at I, ii)
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Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;
The thief doth fear each bush an officer.
Topic: Suspicion
Source: King Henry the Sixth, Part III (Richard, Duke of Gloucester at V, vi)
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The swallow follows not summer more willing than we your
lordship.
Topic: Swallows
Source: The Life of Timon of Athens (Second Friend at III, vi)
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Now to the Goths, as swift as swallow flies,
There to dispose this treasure in mine arms
And secretly to greet the empress's friends.
Topic: Swallows
Source: Titus Andronicus (Aaron at IV, ii)
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Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can
Her heart inform her tongue--the swan's down-feather
That stands upon the swell at full of tide,
And neither way inclines.
Topic: Swans
Source: Antony and Cleopatra (Antony at III, ii)
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We bodged again, as I have been a swan
With bootless labor swim against the tide
And spend her strength with overmatching waves.
Topic: Swans
Source: King Henry the Sixth, Part III (Plantagenet, Duke of York at I, iv)
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I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of fraity sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.
Topic: Swans
Source: The Life and Death of King John (Prince Henry at V, vii)
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Let music sound while he doth make his choice;
Then if he lose he makes a swanlike end,
Fading in music.
Topic: Swans
Source: The Merchant of Venice (Portia at III, ii)
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I will play the swan,
And die in music.
Topic: Swans
Source: Othello the Moor of Venice (Emilia at V, ii)
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Coal-black is better than another hue
In that it scorns to bear another hue;
For all the water in the ocean
Can never turn the swan's black legs to white,
Although she lave them hourly in the flood.
Topic: Swans
Source: Titus Andronicus (Aaron at IV, ii)
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And then a whoreson jackanapes must take me up for swearing, as
if I borrowed mine oaths of him and might not spend them at my
pleasure.
Topic: Swearing
Source: Cymbeline (Cloten at II, i)
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When a gentlemen is disposed to swear, it is not for any
standers-by to curtail his oaths.
Topic: Swearing
Source: Cymbeline (Cloten at II, i)
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I'll be damned for never a king's son in Christendom.
Topic: Swearing
Source: King Henry the Fourth, Part I (Falstaff at I, ii)
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That in the captain's but a choleric word,
Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.
Topic: Swearing
Source: Measure for Measure (Isabella at II, ii)
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Do not swear at all;
Or if thou wilt, swear by thy gracious self,
Which is the god of my idolatry,
And I'll believe thee.
Topic: Swearing
Source: Romeo and Juliet (Juliet at II, ii)
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So soon as ever thou seest him, draw; and as thou draw'st, swear
horrible; for it comes to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a
swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more
approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him.
Topic: Swearing
Source: Twelfth Night, or, What You Will (Toby at III, iv)
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Sweets to the sweet! Farewell.
Topic: Sweetness
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Gertrude, Queen of Denmark at V, i)
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