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"Claudio. In mine eye she is the sweetest lady that ever I looked on.
Benedick. I can see yet without spectacles, and I see no such matter."
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), British dramatist, poet. Claudio and Benedick, in Much Ado About Nothing, act 1, sc. 1, l. 187-90.
Claudio has fallen in love with Hero. |
"There is gold, and here
My bluest veins to kiss—a hand that kings
Have lipped, and trembled kissing."
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), British dramatist, poet. Cleopatra, in Antony and Cleopatra, act 2, sc. 5, l. 28-30.
Allowing a messenger to kiss the royal hand. |
"Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws,
And burn the long-liv'd phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet'st,
And do what'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;"
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), British poet. Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws (l. 1-7). . .
The Unabridged William Shakespeare, William George Clark and William Aldis Wright, eds. (1989) Running Press. |
"I love to cope him in these sullen fits,
For then he's full of matter."
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), British dramatist, poet. Duke Senior, in As You Like It, act 2, sc. 1, l. 67-8.
Speaking of the melancholy Jaques; matter means thought. |
"When I was about thy years, Hal, I was not an eagle's talon in the waist, I could have crept into any alderman's thumb-ring.
A plague of sighing and grief, it blows a man up like a
bladder."
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), British dramatist, poet. Falstaff, in Henry IV, Part 1, act 2, sc. 4, l. 329-33. |
"He has his health, and ampler strength indeed
Than most have of his age."
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), British dramatist, poet. Florizel, in The Winter's Tale, act 4, sc. 4, l. 403-4.
Speaking of his father, Polixenes. |
"I begin to find an idle and fond bondage in the oppression of aged tyranny, who sways, not as it hath power, but as it is suffered."
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), British dramatist, poet. Gloucester, in King Lear, act 1, sc. 2, l. 49-51.
"Suffered" means allowed, by the young who could seize power. |
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), British dramatist, poet. Hamlet, in Hamlet, act 2, sc. 2, l. 249-50.
To Rosencrantz and Guildenstern; Hamlet says Denmark is a prison and they do not think so. |
"O, when she is angry she is keen and shrewd;
She was a vixen when she went to school,
And though she be but little, she is fierce."
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), British dramatist, poet. Helena, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, act 3, sc. 2, l. 323-5.
On Hermia; "keen and shrewd" meanscaustic and malicious. |
"Good God, the souls of all my tribe defend
From jealousy!"
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), British dramatist, poet. Iago, in Othello, act 3, sc. 3, l. 175-6. |
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William Shakespeare
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