LEONATO: Bring me a father that so loved his
child,
Whose joy of her is overwhelm'd like mine,
And bid him speak of patience;
Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine
And let it answer every strain for strain,
As thus for thus and such a grief for such,
In every lineament, branch, shape, and form:
If such a one will smile and stroke his beard,
Bid sorrow wag, cry 'hem!' when he should groan,
Patch grief with proverbs, make misfortune drunk
With candle-wasters; bring him yet to me,
And I of him will gather patience.
Much Ado about Nothing, V, i
LEONATO: No, no; 'tis all men's office to
speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow,
But no man's virtue nor sufficiency
To be so moral when he shall endure
The like himself.
Much Ado about Nothing,
LEONATO: For there was never yet
philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently,
However they have writ the style of gods
And made a push at chance and sufferance.
Much Ado about Nothing, V, i
LEONATO: Here stand a pair of honourable
men;
A third is fled, that had a hand in it.
I thank you, princes, for my daughter's death:
Record it with your high and worthy deeds:
'Twas bravely done, if you bethink you of it.
Much Ado about Nothing, V, i
BENEDICK: Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme; I have tried: I can find out no rhyme to 'lady' but 'baby', an innocent rhyme; for 'scorn', 'horn,' a hard rhyme; for, 'school', 'fool', a babbling rhyme; very ominous endings.
Much Ado about Nothing, V, ii
BENEDICK: No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.
Much Ado about Nothing, V, ii
BENEDICK: Dost thou think I care for a satire or an epigram?
Much Ado about Nothing, V, ii
RUMOUR: Open your ears; for which of you will
stop
The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?
2 Henry IV, Induction
RUMOUR: Rumour is a pipe
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures
And of so easy and so plain a stop
That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wavering multitude,
Can play upon it.
2 Henry IV, Induction
NORTHUMBERLAND: What news, Lord Bardolph?
every minute now
Should be the father of some stratagem.
2 Henry IV, I, i
NORTHUMBERLAND: The times are wild:
contention, like a horse
Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose
And bears down all before him.
2 Henry IV, I, i
NORTHUMBERLAND: Yet the first bringer of
unwelcome news
Hath but a losing office, and his tongue
Sounds ever after as a sullen bell,
Remember'd tolling a departing friend.
2 Henry IV, I, i
NORTHUMBERLAND: And let this world no longer
be a stage
To feed contention in a lingering act;
But let one spirit of the first-born Cain
Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,
And darkness be the burier of the dead!
2 Henry IV, I, i
FALSTAFF: I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.
2 Henry IV, I, ii
CHIEF JUSTICE: Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? a yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? an increasing belly? is not your voice broken? your wind short? your chin double? your wit single? and every part about you blasted with antiquity? and will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John!
2 Henry IV, II, ii
FALSTAFF: I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.
2 Henry IV, I, ii
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: An habitation giddy and
unsure
Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
2 Henry IV, I, iii
ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: Past and to come seems best; things present worst.
2 Henry IV, I, iii
HASTINGS: We are time's subjects, and time bids be gone.
2 Henry IV, I, iii
PRINCE: Well, thus we play the fools with the time, and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.
2 Henry IV, II, ii
LADY NORTHUMBERLAND: I have given over, I will speak no more.
2 Henry IV, II, iii
POINS: Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?
2 Henry IV, II, iii
KING HENRY IV: Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
2 Henry IV, III, i
KING HENRY IV: O God! that one might read the
book of fate,
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea!
2 Henry IV, III, i
KING HENRY IV: O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.
2 Henry IV, III, i
FALSTAFF: We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.
2 Henry IV, III, ii
MOWBRAY: We shall be winnow'd with so rough a
wind
That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff
And good from bad find no partition.
2 Henry IV, IV, i
KING HENRY IV: Chide him for faults, and do it
reverently,
When thou perceive his blood inclined to mirth;
But, being moody, give him line and scope,
Till that his passions, like a whale on ground,
Confound themselves with working.
2 Henry IV, IV, iv
KING HENRY IV: The blood weeps from my heart
when I do shape
In forms imaginary the unguided days
And rotten times that you shall look upon
When I am sleeping with my ancestors.
2 Henry IV, IV, iv
CLARENCE: The incessant care and labour of his
mind
Hath wrought the mure that should confine it in
So thin that life looks through and will break out.
2 Henry IV, IV, iv
KING HENRY IV: For this the foolish
over-careful fathers
Have broke their sleep with thoughts, their brains with care,
Their bones with industry;
For this they have engrossed and piled up
The canker'd heaps of strange-achieved gold;
For this they have been thoughtful to invest
Their sons with arts and martial exercises:
When, like the bee, culling from every flower
The virtuous sweets,
Our thighs pack'd with wax, our mouths with honey,
We bring it to the hive, and, like the bees,
Are murdered for our pains.
2 Henry IV, IV, v
KING HENRY IV: Thou hidest a thousand daggers
in thy thoughts,
Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart,
To stab at half an hour of my life.
2 Henry IV, IV, v
KING HENRY IV: Be it thy course to busy giddy
minds
With foreign quarrels; that action, hence borne out,
May waste the memory of the former days.
2 Henry IV, IV, v
FALSTAFF: My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!
KING HENRY V: I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers.
2 Henry IV, V, v
KING HENRY V: How ill white hairs become a
fool and jester!
I have long dream'd of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell'd, so old and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest:
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn'd away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
2 Henry IV, V, v
CHORUS: O for a Muse of fire, that would
ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene.
Henry V, Prologue
CHORUS: Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
Henry V, Prologue
CHORUS: O, pardon! since a crooked figure
may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Henry V, Prologue
ELY: The strawberry grows underneath the
nettle
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality.
Henry V, I, i
KING HENRY V: Therefore take heed how you
impawn our person,
How you awake our sleeping sword of war.
We charge you in the name of God take heed,
For never two such kingdoms did contend
Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops
Are every one a woe, a sore complaint
'Gainst him whose wrong gives edge unto the swords
That make such waste in brief mortality.
Henry V, I, ii
CANTERBURY: To fill King Edward's fame with
prisoner kings
And make her chronicle as rich with praise
As is the ooze and bottom of the sea
With sunken wreck and sunless treasuries.
Henry V, I, ii
WESTMORELAND: For once the eagle England being
in prey,
To her unguarded nest the weasel Scot
Comes sneaking and so sucks her princely eggs,
Playing the mouse in absence of the cat,
To tear and havoc more than she can eat.
Henry V, I, ii
CANTERBURY: For so work the honey-bees,
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 majesty, 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.
Henry V, I, ii