Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare · E. Nesbit
AUTHORITY.
Thou hast seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? And the creature run from the cur? There thou might'st behold the great image of authority a dog's obeyed in office. King Lear -- IV. 6. Could great men thunder As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet, For every pelting, petty officer Would use his heaven for thunder: nothing but thunder-- Merciful heaven! Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt, Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, Than the soft myrtle!--O, but man, proud man! Drest 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 make the angels weep. Measure for Measure -- II. 2. The hand, that hath made you fair, hath made you good: the goodness, that is cheap in beauty, makes beauty brief in goodness; but grace, being the soul of your complexion, should keep the body of it ever fair. Measure for Measure -- III. 1. It so falls out That what we have we prize not to the worth, Whiles we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, Why, then we rack the value; then we find The virtue, that possession would not show us Whiles it was ours. Much Ado About Nothing -- IV. 1.
It will come to pass, That every braggart shall be found an ass. All's Well that Ends Well -- IV. 3. They that have the voice of lions, and the act of bares, are they not monsters? Troilus and Cressida -- III. 2. Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Hamlet -- III. 1. No might nor greatness in mortality Can censure 'scape; back-wounding calumny The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong, Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue? Measure for Measure -- III. 2. Ceremony Was but devised at first, to set a gloss On faint deeds, hollow welcomes. Recanting goodness, sorry ere 'tis shown; But where there is true friendship, there needs none. Timon of Athens -- I. 2. Men Can counsel, and speak comfort to that grief Which they themselves not feel; but tasting it, Their counsel turns to passion, which before Would give preceptial medicine to rage, Fetter strong madness in a silken thread, Charm ache with air, and agony with words: 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 -- V. 1. Well, every one can master a grief, but he that has it.
Idem -- II. When the moon shone, we did not see the candle. So doth the greater glory dim the less; A substitute shines brightly as a king, Until a king be by; and then his state Empties itself, as does an inland brook Into the main of waters. Merchant of Venice -- V. 1. Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. Hamlet -- III. 1. My crown is in my heart, not on my head; Not decked with diamonds and Indian stones, Nor to be seen; my crown is called “content;” A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy. King Henry VI., Part 3d - III. 1. How, in one house, Should many people, under two commands, Hold amity? King Lear -- II. 4. When two authorities are set up, Neither supreme, how soon confusion May enter twixt the gap of both, and take The one by the other. Coriolanus -- III. 1. 'Tis better to be lowly born, And range with humble livers in content, Than to be perked up in a glistering grief, And wear a golden sorrow. King Henry VIII. -- II. 3.
Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Julius Caesar -- II. 2. That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat Of habit's devil, is angel yet in this: That to the use of actions fair and good He likewise gives a frock, or livery, That aptly is put on: Refrain to-night: And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence: the next more easy: For use almost can change the stamp of nature, And either curb the devil, or throw him out With wondrous potency. Hamlet -- III. 4. A custom More honored in the breach, then the observance. Idem -- I. 4. Kings, and mightiest potentates, must die; For that's the end of human misery. King Henry VI., Part 1st -- III. 2. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come, when it will come. Julius Caesar -- II. 2. The dread of something after death, Makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others we know not of. Hamlet -- III. 1. The sense of death is most in apprehension. Measure for Measure -- III. 1. By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death Will seize the doctor too.
Cymbeline -- V. 5. The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul, producing holy witness, Is like a villain with a smiling cheek; A goodly apple rotten at the heart; O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath! Merchant of Venice -- I. 3. Foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o'erwhelm them to men's eyes. Hamlet -- I. 2. How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds, Makes deeds ill done! King John -- IV. 2. That we would do, We should do when we would; for this would changes, And hath abatements and delays as many, As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; And then this should is like a spendthrift sigh, That hurts by easing. Hamlet -- IV. 7. For love of grace, Lay not that flattering unction to your soul; It will but skin and film the ulcerous place; Whiles rank corruption, mining all within, Infects unseen. Hamlet -- III. 4. Let's teach ourselves that honorable stop, Not to outsport discretion. Othello -- II. 3. I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in To saucy doubts and fears. Macbeth -- III. 4. Boundless intemperance. In nature is a tyranny; it hath been Th' untimely emptying of the happy throne, And fall of many kings. Measure for Measure -- I. 3. Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy Rather in power, than use; and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key; be checked for silence, But never taxed for speech.
All's Well that Ends Well -- I. 1. But yet I do not like but yet, it does allay The good precedence; fye upon but yet: But yet is as a gailer to bring forth Some monstrous malefactor. Antony and Cleopatra -- II. 5. A surfeit of the sweetest things The deepest loathing to the stomach brings. Midsummer Night's Dream -- II. 3. Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil. Othello -- II. 3. Falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent, Three things that women hold in hate. Two Gentlemen of Verona -- III. 2. Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds Where it should guard. King Henry VI., Part 2d -- V. 2. Fear, and be slain; no worse can come, to fight: And fight and die, is death destroying death; Where fearing dying, pays death servile breath. King Richard II. -- III. 2. Small cheer, and great welcome, makes a merry feast. Comedy of Errors -- III. 1. Ingratitude! Thou marble-hearted fiend, More hideous, when thou showest thee in a child, Than the sea-monster. King Lear -- I. 4. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child Idem -- I. 4. Determine on some course, More than a wild exposure to each cause That starts i' the way before thee. Coriolanus -- IV. 1.
Yield not thy neck To fortune's yoke, but let thy dauntless mind Still ride in triumph over all mischance. King Henry VI., Part 3d -- III. 3. When fortune means to men most good, She looks upon them with a threatening eye. King John -- III. 4. Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness! This is the state of man: To-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honors thick upon him; The third day, comes a frost, a killing frost; And,--when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is ripening,--nips his root, And then he falls, as I do. King Henry VIII. -- III. 2. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. Twelfth Night -- II. 5. O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes. As You Like It -- V. 2. An honest man is able to speak for himself, when a knave is not. King Henry VI., Part 2d -- V. 1. To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand. Hamlet -- II. 2. Devils soonest tempt, resembling spirits of light. Love's Labor Lost -- IV. 3. One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
Hamlet -- I. 5. The trust I have is in mine innocence, And therefore am I bold and resolute. Troilus and Cressida -- IV. 4. The shrug, the hum, or ha; these petty brands, That calumny doth use;-- For calumny will sear Virtue itself:--these shrugs, these bums, and ha's, When you have said, she's goodly, come between, Ere you can say she's honest. Winter's Tale -- II. 1. Trifles, light as air, Are, to the jealous, confirmations strong As proofs of holy writ. Othello -- III. 3. O beware of jealousy: It is the green-eyed monster, which does mock The meat it feeds on. Idem. A jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it. Love's Labor Lost -- V. 2. He jests at scars, that never felt a wound. Romeo and Juliet -- II. 2. Heaven is above all; there sits a Judge, That no king can corrupt. King Henry VIII, -- III. 1. 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. Macbeth -- V. 5. We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. The Tempest -- IV. 1.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.