Quotes
Quotes about Wit
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engag'd! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May.
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
How is 't with you,
That you do bend your eye on vacancy?
For 't is the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar.
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused.
Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake.
You must wear your rue with a difference. There's a daisy; I would give you some violets, but they withered.
Forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum.
'T is the breathing time of day with me.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
Tremble, thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulged crimes,
Unwhipp'd of justice.
I 'll talk a word with this same learned Theban.
A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?
Most potent, grave, and reverend signiors,
My very noble and approv'd good masters,
That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter,
It is most true; true, I have married her:
The very head and front of my offending
Hath this extent, no more. Rude am I in my speech,
And little bless'd with the soft phrase of peace:
For since these arms of mine had seven years' pith,
Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used
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.
And often did beguile her of her tears,
When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffer'd. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs;
She swore, in faith, 't was strange, 't was passing strange,
'T was pitiful, 't was wondrous pitiful;
She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd
That Heaven had made her such a man; she thank'd me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story,
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:
She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd,
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have used.
King Stephen was a worthy peer,
His breeches cost him but a crown;
He held them sixpence all too dear,--
With that he called the tailor lown.
Swell, bosom, with thy fraught,
For 't is of aspics' tongues!
Like to the Pontic sea,
Whose icy current and compulsive course
Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on
To the Propontic and the Hellespont,
Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,
Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,
Till that a capable and wide revenge
Swallow them up.
This grief is crowned with consolation.
Epicurean cooks
Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite.
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water; the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description.
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety.
'T was merry when
You wager'd on your angling; when your diver
Did hang a salt-fish on his hook, which he
With fervency drew up.
