Quotes
Quotes about Wit
Thus far into the bowels of the land
Have we marched on without impediment.
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings;
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.
'T is 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.
Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain-tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing.
And then to breakfast with
What appetite you have.
Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
This many summers in a sea of glory,
But far beyond my depth: my high-blown pride
At length broke under me and now has left me,
Weary and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye:
I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours!
There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have:
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.
Had I but served my God with half the zeal
I served my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.
An old man, broken with the storms of state,
Is come to lay his weary bones among ye:
Give him a little earth for charity!
A cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in 't.
Enough, with over-measure.
That it shall hold companionship in peace
With honour, as in war.
As is the bud bit with an envious worm
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.
For I am proverb'd with a grandsire phrase.
O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you!
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep.
Rom. Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear,
That tips with silver all these fruit-tree tops--
Jul. O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
Stabbed with a white wench's black eye.
When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
Thou cutt'st my head off with a golden axe.
One writ with me in sour misfortune's book.
Every room
Hath blazed with lights and bray'd with minstrelsy.
Are not within the leaf of pity writ.
I 'll example you with thievery:
The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea; the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears; the earth's a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen
From general excrement: each thing's a thief.
Why, then the world's mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.
"Darest thou, Cassius, now
Leap in with me into this angry flood,
And swim to yonder point?" Upon the word,
Accoutred as I was, I plunged in
And bade him follow.
Conjure with 'em,--
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Cæsar.
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed,
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
