DICTIONARY

OP

Shakespearian Quotations.

ABILITY, INNATE.

A.

There's in him stuff that puts him to these ends:
For, being not propp'd by ancestry, whose grace
Chalks successors their way; nor call'd upon
For high feats done to the crown; neither allied
To eminent assistants; but spider-like,
Out of his self-drawing web, he gives us note;
The force of his own merit makes his way;
A gift that heaven gives for him, which buys
A place next to the king.

ABSENCE.

H. VIII. i. 1.

I have this while with leaden thoughts been press'd;
But I shall, in a more continuate time,
Strike off this score of absence.

LOVERS'.

What! keep a week away? seven days and nights?

O. iii. 4.

Eight score eight hours, and lovers' absent hours,-
More tedious than the dial eight score times?

O weary reckoning!

O. iii. 4.

O thou that dost inhabit in my breast,

Leave not the mansion so long tenantless;

Lest growing ruinous the building fall,
And leave no memory of what it was.

T. G. v. 4.

ABUSE, AND BAD ENGLISH (See also VITUPERATION).

Have I lived to stand at the taunt of one that makes fritters of English?

M. W. v. 5.

Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.

M. W. i. 4,

Let them keep their limbs whole, and hack our English.

ACCUSATION.

To vouch this is no proof,

M. W. iii. 4.

0. i. 3.

Without more certain and more overt test, Than these thin habits, and poor likelihoods Of modern seeming do prefer against him. ACHIEVEMENT. A very good piece of work, I assure you, and a merry. M. N. D. i. 1. Let it be booked with the rest of this day's deeds; or I swear I will have it in a particular ballad, with mine own picture on the top of it. H. IV. PT. II. iv. 1

ACQUITTAL.

Now doth thy honour stand,
In him that was of late an heretic,

As firm as faith.

ACTION, DRAMATIC.

M. W. iv. 4.

Let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, and the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure: *** O, there be players, that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly,-not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor man, have so strutted, and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. H. iii. 2. ADOPTION.

'Tis often seen

Adoption strives with nature; and choice breeds
A native slip to us from foreign seeds.

ADORATION, A LOVER'S.

A. W. i. 3.

What you do,

ADORATION,-continued.

Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet,
I'd have you do it ever: when you sing,
I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms;
Pray so; and, for the order of your affairs,
To sing them too: When you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that; move still, still so, and own
No other function: Each your doing,

So singular in each particular,

Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds,
That all your acts are queens.

ADVERSITY (See also MISFORTune).

W. T. iv. 4.

T. G. iv. 1.

But myself,

A man I am, cross'd with adversity.

Who had the world as my confectionary;

The mouths, the tongues, the eyes, the hearts of men
At duty, more than I could frame employment;
That numberless upon me stuck, as leaves
Do on the oak, have with one winter's brush
Fell from their boughs, and left me open, bare,
For every storm that blows; I, to bear this,
That never knew but better, is some burden.
Such a house broke!

So noble a master fallen! All gone! and not
One friend to take his fortune by the arm,
And go along with him!

FOLLY OF REPINING AT.

What think'st

T. A. iv. 3

T. A. iv. 2.

That the bleak air, thy boisterous chamberlain,
Will put thy shirt on warm? Will these moist trees,
That have out-lived the eagle, page thy heels,

And skip when thou point'st out? will the cold brook,
Candied with ice, caudle thy morning taste,

To cure thy o'er-night's surfeit? Call the creatures;
Whose naked natures live in all the spight

Of wreakful heaven; whose bare unhoused trunks,
To the conflicting elements expos'd,

Answer mere nature,-bid them flatter thee.

T. A. iv. 3.

ITS USES.

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venemous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in its head.

A. Y. ii. 1.

'Tis good for men to love their present pains,
Upon example; so the spirit is eas'd:

ADVERSITY,-continued.

And, when the mind is quicken'd, out of doubt,
The organs, though defunct and dead before,
Break up their drowsy grave, and newly move
With casted slough, and fresh legerity.

H. V. iii. 1.

In poison there is physic; and these news
Having been well, that would have made me sick;
Being sick, have in some measure made me well.
And as the wretch whose fever-weaken'd joints,
Like strengthless hinges, buckle under life,
Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire.

Out of his keeper's arms; even so my limbs,

Weaken'd with grief, being now enrag'd with grief,
Are thrice themselves.

ADVICE (See also CAUTION).

Fasten your ear to my advisings.

H. ĮV. PT. II. i. 1.

M. M. iii 1.

Obey thy parents; keep thy word justly; swear not; commit not with man's sworn spouse; set not thy sweet heart on proud array.

Take heed, be wary how you place your words.

K. L. iii. 4.

H. VI. PT. 1. iii. 2.

Let go thy hold, when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following it; but the great one that goes up the hill, let him draw thee after. When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again.

Pray be counsel'd:

I have a heart as little apt as yours,
But yet a brain, that leads my use of anger
To better 'vantage.

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 check'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech.

K. L. ii. 4.

C. iii. 2.

A. W. i. 1.

Keep thy pen from lenders' books, and defy the foul fiend. Let not the creaking of shoes, nor the rustling of silks, betray thy poor heart to women.

TO A YOUNG WOMAN.

Fear it, my dear sister;

And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
The chariest maid is prodigal enough,
If she unmask her beauty to the moon;

K. L. iii. 4.

K. L. iii. 4.

ADVICE, continued.

Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes :
The canker galls the infants of the spring,
Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd;
And in the morn and liquid dew of youth
Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Be wary then; best safety lies in fear;
Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.
TO A YOUNG MAN.

Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel:
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each unhatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel: but, being in,
Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.
Give ev'ry man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

But not express'd in fancy: rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man:-
Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all,-To thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell:-my blessing season this in thee!
TO A STATESMAN.

Mark but my fall, and that that ruin'd me.
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition ;
By that sin fell the angels; how can man then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by't?

H. i. 3.

H. i. 3.

Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee;
Corruption wins not more than honesty.

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,

To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not:

Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,

Thy God's, and truth's; then if thou fall'st, O Cromwell,

Thou fall'st a blessed martyr.

ADULATION (See also FLATTERY).

You shout me forth

In acclamations hyperbolical;

As if I lov'd my little should be dieted
In praises sauc'd with lies.

H. VIII. iii. 2.

C.A.