OMNIPOTENCE, INSCRUTABLE.

He that of greatest works is finisher,
Oft does them by the weakest minister:

So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown
When judges have been babes.

OPENNESS.

I must be found;

My parts, my title, and my perfect soul,
Shall manifest me rightly.

OPHELIA DROWNING.

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,

A. W. ii. 1.

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There, with fantastic garlands did she come,
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,

But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them.
There on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies, and herself,

0. i. 2.

Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;

As one incapable of her own distress,

Or like a creature native and endu'd

Unto that element: but long it could not be,
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay,
To muddy death.

OPINION (See also CENSURE.)

I am that I am, and they that level

At my abuses, reckon up their owne,

H. IV. 7.

I may be straight, though they themselves be bevell,
By their rank thoughts, my deeds must not be showne:
Unless this general evil they maintaine,

All men are bad, and in their badness raigne. Poems.

Because you want the grace that others have,
You judge it straight a thing impossible
To compass wonders, but by help of devils.

There's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Our virtues

Lie in the interpretation of the time.
Opinion, a sovereign mistress of effects.

H.VI. PT. I. V. 4.

H. ii. 2.

C. iv. 7.

0.1.3

OPINION,-continued.

But fish not with this melancholy bait,
For this fool's gudgeon, this opinion.
Opinion's but a fool, that makes us scan
The outward habit for the inward man.

M. V. i. 1.

P. P. ii. 2.

A plague of opinion! a man may wear it on both sides, like a leather jerkin.

T. C. iii 3.

OPPORTUNITY (See also DELAY, IRRESOLUTION, NEGLECT).

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows, and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose out ventures.

J.C. iv. 3.

Who seeks, and will not take, when once 'tis offer'd,
Shall never find it more.

A. C. ii. 7.

When the sun shines, let foolish gnats make sport,
But creep in crannies, when he hides his beams.

A little fire is quickly trodden out;
Which, being suffer'd, rivers cannot quench.

C. E. ii. 2.

H. VI. PT. III. iv. 8.

The means that heaven yields must be embrac'd,
And not neglected; else, if heaven would,
And we will not, heaven's offer we refuse.

I find my zenith doth depend upon

A most auspicious star; whose influence

If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes
Will ever after droop.

OPPOSITION.

R. II. iii. 2.

T. i. 2

Back, I say, go; lest I let forth your half pint of blood ;— back, that's the utmost of your having:-back.

OPPRESSION.

I love not to see wretchedness o'ercharg'd,
And duty in his service perishing.

C. v. 2.

M.N. v. 1.

I am an ass, indeed; you may prove it by my long ears. I have served him from the hour of my nativity to this instant, and have nothing at his hands for my service, but blows; when I am cold, he heats me with beating: when I am warm, he cools me with beating; I am awak'd with it, when I sleep: rais'd with it, when I sit driven out of doors with it, when I go from home; welcomed home with it, when I return: nay, I bear it on my shoulders, as a

OPPRESSION,-continued.

C. E. iv. 4.

beggar her brat; and, I think, when he hath lam'd me, shall beg with it from door to door.

Each new morn,

New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows
Strike heaven on the face.

M. iv. 2

THE NATURAL DUTY OF RESISTANCE TO.
To whom do lions cast their gentle looks?
Not to the beast that would usurp their den.
Whose hand is that the forest bear doth lick?
Not his, that spoils her young before her face.
Who 'scapes the lurking serpent's mortal sting?
Not he that sets his foot upon her back.
The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on,
And doves will peck, in safeguard of their brood.
H. VI. PT. III. ii. 2.

The poor wren,

The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in the nest, against the owl.
OPTICS (See EYE).

ORATION, PEDANTIC.

Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,"

Three pil'd hyperboles, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical; these summer flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.
ORATOR.

Doubt not, my lord; I'll play the orator,
As if the golden fee, for which I plead,
Were for myself.

ORATORY, POPULAR.

For in such business,

M. iv. 2.

L. L v.2

R. III. iii. 5.

Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant
More learned than their ears.

Pray, be content;

Mother, I am going to the market-place;

Chide me no more. I'll mountebank their loves,

Cog their hearts from them, and come home belov'd
Of all the trades in Rome.

C. iii. 2.

C. iii. 2

ORDER.

Degree being vizardea,

The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask.

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre,
Observe degree, priority, and place,

Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,

ORDER,-continued.

Office, and custom, in all line of order:
And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol,
In noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd
Amidst the other; whose med'cinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,

And posts, like the commandment of a king,

Sans check, to good and bad: But when the planets,
In evil mixture, to disorder wander,

What plagues, and what portents! what mutiny!
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth!

Commotion in the winds! frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate

The unity and married calm of states

Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shak'd,
Which is the ladder of all high designs,

The enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from divided shores,
The primogeniture and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy: The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores,
And make a sop of all this solid globe:

Strength should be lord of imbecility,

And the rude son should strike his father dead: Force should be right; or, rather, right and wrong (Between whose endless jar justice resides)

Should lose their names, and so should justice too.

Then every thing includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite:

And appetite, a universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power,

Must make perforce a universal prey,

And, last, eat up himself. Great Agamemnon;
This chaos, when degree is suffocate,

Follows the choking:

And this neglection of degree it is,

That by a pace goes backward, with a purpose
It hath to climb. The general's disdain'd
By him one step below; he, by the next;
That next, by him beneath: so every step,
Exampled by the first pace that is sick
Of his superior, grows to an envious fever
Of pale and bloodless emulation.

T.C. i. 3.

ORDER,-continued.

The world is still deceiv'd with ornament. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, But, being season'd with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it, and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? ORNAMENT.

Thus ornament is but the guiled shore

To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf
Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word,

The seeming truth which cunning times put on
To entrap the wisest.

OTHELLO'S APOLOGY.

Rude am I in speech,

peace;

M.V. iii. 2.

M. V. iii. 2.

And little bless'd with the soft phrase of
For since these arms of mine had seven years' pith,
Till now some nine moons wasted, they have us'd
Their dearest action in the tented field;

And little of this great world can I speak,

More than pertains to feats of broil and battle;
And therefore little shall I grace my cause,

In speaking for myself: Yet, by your gracious patience,
I will a round unvarnish'd tale deliver

Of my whole course of love; what drugs, what charms,
What conjuration, and what mighty magic,

(For such proceeding I am charg'd withal)

I won his daughter with.

Her father lov'd me; oft invited me;

Still question'd me the story

of my life,

From year to year; the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I have pass'd.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
To the very moment that he bade me tell it.
Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents by flood and field;

Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach;

Of being taken by the insolent foe,

And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence,

And portance in my travel's history:

Wherein of antres vast, and desarts wild,

Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,

It was my hint to speak. Such was my process;

And of the cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders. These things to hear,

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