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Lady, you are the cruell'st she alive
If you will these graces to the grave,
And leave the world no copy.
Topic: Cruelty
Source: Twelfth Night, or, What You Will (Viola at I, v)
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And you, enchantment,
Worthy enough a herdsman--yea, him too,
That makes himself, but for our honor therein,
Unworthy thee-if ever henceforth thou
These rural latches to his entrance open,
Or hoop his body more with thy embraces,
I will devise a death as cruel for thee
As thou art tender to't.
Topic: Cruelty
Source: The Winter's Tale (Polixenes at IV, iv)
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At land indeed
Thou dost o'ercount me of my father's house:
But since the cuckoo builds not for himself,
Remain in't as thou mayst.
Topic: Cuckoos
Source: Antony and Cleopatra (Pompey at II, v)
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And, being fed by us, you used us so
As that ungentle gull, the cuckoo's bird,
Useth the sparrow--did oppress our nest; . . .
Topic: Cuckoos
Source: King Henry the Fourth, Part I (Worcester at V, i)
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When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men: for thus sings he, Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: O, word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
Topic: Cuckoos
Source: Love's Labor's Lost (Spring at V, ii)
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I would I had some flowers o' th' spring that might
Become your time of day, and yours, and yours,
That wear upon your virgin branches yet
Your maidenheads growing. O, Proserpina,
For the flowers now that, frighted, thou let'st fall
From Dis's wagon; daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength--a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one.
Topic: Daffodils
Source: The Winter's Tale (Perdita at IV, iv)
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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: Darkness
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Lysander at I, i)
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The charm dissolves apace;
And as the morning steals upon the night,
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
Their clearer reason.
Topic: Darkness
Source: The Tempest (Prospero at V, i)
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Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.
Topic: Death
Source: None
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When he shall die Take him and cut him 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.
Topic: Death / Immortality
Source: None
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He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.
Topic: Death / Immortality
Source: None
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Out, out, brief candle!
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.
Topic: Death / Immortality
Source: None
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For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
Topic: Deceit
Source: None
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When we shall hear
The rain and wind beat dark December, how
In this our pinching cave shall we discourse
The freezing hours away?
Topic: December
Source: Cymbeline (Arviragus at III, iii)
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For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
Topic: Deception
Source: None
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Man delights not me--nor woman neither, though, by your smiling
you seem to say so.
Topic: Delight
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Hamlet at II, ii)
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Why, all delights are vain, but that most vain
Which, with pain purchased, doth inherit pain:
As, painfully to pore upon a book,
To seek the light of truth, which truth the while
Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.
Topic: Delight
Source: Love's Labor's Lost (Berowne at I, i)
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This Tharsus, o'er which I have the government,
A city on whom Plenty held full hand,
For Riches strewed herself even in her streets;
Whose towers bore heads so high they kissed the clouds,
And strangers ne'er beheld but wond'red at;
Whose men and dames so jetted and adorned,
Like one another's glass to trim them by;
Their tables were stored full, to glad the sight,
And not so much to feed on as delight;
All poverty was scorned, and pride so great
The name of help grew odious to repeat.
Topic: Delight
Source: Pericles Prince of Tyre (Cleon at I, iv)
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These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which, as they kiss, consume.
Topic: Delight
Source: Romeo and Juliet (Friar Laurence at II, vi)
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Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Topic: Denmark
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Marcellus at I, iv)
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Give me my robe, put on my crown, I have
Immortal longings in me.
Topic: Desire
Source: Antony and Cleopatra (Cleopatra at V, ii)
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I do desire we may be better strangers.
Topic: Desire
Source: As You Like It (Orlando at III, ii)
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Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?
Topic: Desire
Source: As You Like It (Rosalind at IV, i)
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Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay. Good hay,
sweet hay, hath no fellow.
Topic: Desire
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Bottom at IV, i)
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Had doting Priam checked his son's desire,
Troy had been bright with fame, and not with fire.
Topic: Desire
Source: The Rape of Lucrece (l. 1,490)
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O that this too too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter.
Topic: Despair
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Hamlet at I, ii)
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They have tied me to a stake. I cannot fly,
But bear-like I must fight the course.
Topic: Despair
Source: Macbeth (Macbeth at V, vii)
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If thou dost slander her and torture me,
Never pray more; abandon all remorse;
On horror's head horrors accumulate;
Do deeds to make heaven weep, all earth amazed;
For nothing canst thou to damnation add
Greater than that.
Topic: Despair
Source: Othello the Moor of Venice (Othello at III, iii)
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O, break, my heart! poor bankrout, break at once!
To prison, eyes; ne'er look on liberty!
Vile earth, to earth resign; end motion here,
And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier!
Topic: Despair
Source: Romeo and Juliet (Juliet at III, ii)
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Discomfort guides my tongue
And bids me speak of nothing but despair.
Topic: Despair
Source: The Tragedy of King Richard the Second (Salisbury at III, ii)
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But, O thou tyrant,
Do not repent these things, for they are heavier
Than all thy woes can stir. Therefore betake thee
To nothing but despair.
Topic: Despair
Source: The Winter's Tale (Paulina at III, ii)
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He who has never hoped can never despair.
Topic: Despair
Source: The Winter's Tale (Paulina at III, ii)
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O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there,
From me, whose love was of that dignity
That it went hand in hand even with the vow
I made to her in marriage, and to decline
Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor
To those of mine!
Topic: Destiny
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Ghost at I, v)
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A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of
the fish that hath fed of that worm.
Topic: Destiny
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Hamlet at IV, iii)
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Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O, that that earth which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall t' expel the winter's flaw!
Topic: Destiny
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Hamlet at V, i)
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Let Hercules himself do what he may,
The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.
Topic: Destiny
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Hamlet at V, i)
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We shall be winnowed with so rough a wind
That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff
And good from bad find no partition.
Topic: Destiny
Source: King Henry the Fourth, Part II (Mowbray at IV, i)
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Here burns my candle out; ay, here it dies,
Which, whiles it lasted, gave King Henry light.
Topic: Destiny
Source: King Henry the Sixth, Part III (Clifford at II, vi)
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Think you I bear the shears of destiny?
Have I commandment on the pulse of life?
Topic: Destiny
Source: The Life and Death of King John (King John at IV, ii)
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Marry, he must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil.
Topic: Devil
Source: The Comedy of Errors (Dromio of Syracuse at IV, iii)
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I charge thee, Satan, housed within this man,
To yield possession to my holy prayers,
And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight.
I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven.
Topic: Devil
Source: The Comedy of Errors (Pinch at IV, iv)
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The spirit that I have seen
May be a devil, and the devil hath power
T' assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me.
Topic: Devil
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Hamlet at II, ii)
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Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a suit of
sables.
Topic: Devil
Source: Hamlet Prince of Denmark (Hamlet at III, ii)
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He will give the devil his due.
Topic: Devil
Source: King Henry the Fourth, Part I (Prince Henry at I, ii)
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The prince of darkness is a gentleman.
Modo he's called, and Mahu.
Topic: Devil
Source: King Lear (Edgar at III, iv)
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Let me say amen betimes lest the devil cross my prayer, for here
he comes in the likeness of a Jew.
Topic: Devil
Source: The Merchant of Venice (Solanio at III, i)
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The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold;
That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Topic: Devil
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Theseus at V, i)
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This is a devil, and no monster. I will leave him; I have no
long spoon.
Topic: Devil
Source: The Tempest (Stephano at II, ii)
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What, man, defy the devil? Consider, he's an enemy to mankind.
Topic: Devil
Source: Twelfth Night, or, What You Will (Toby at III, iv)
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I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
Topic: Dew
Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Fairy at II, i)
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