Category: Lit & Crit

“Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.” – William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona 1.1

“Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devis’d at first to keep the strong in awe.” – William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King Richard III 5.3

“An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.” – William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King Richard III 4.4

“Why should calamity be full of words? Windy attorneys to their client woes, airy succeeders of intestate joys, poor breathing orators of miseries let them have scope: though what they do help nothing else, yet do they ease the heart.” – William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King Richard III 4.4

“Fearful commenting is leaden servitor to dull delay; delay leads impotent and snail-pac’d beggary.” – William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King Richard III 4.4

“When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks; when great leaves fall, then winter is at hand; when the sun sets, who doth not look for night? Untimely storms make men expect a dearth.” – William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King Richard III 2.3

“Woe to that land that’s govern’d by a child!” – William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King Richard III 2.3

“Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours, makes the night morning, and the noontide night.” – William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King Richard III 1.4

“Talkers are no good doers.” – William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King Richard III 1.3

“They that stand high have many blasts to shake them; and if they fall they dash themselves to pieces.” – William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King Richard III 1.3

“Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; the thief doth fear each bush an officer.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Third Part 5.6

“Wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss, but cheerly seek how to redress their harms.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Third Part 5.4

“When the fox hath once got in his nose, he’ll soon find means to make the body follow.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Third Part 4.7

“What fates impose, that men must needs abide; it boots not to resist both wind and tide.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Third Part 4.3

“My crown is in my heart, not on my head; not deck’d with diamonds and Indian stones, nor to be seen: my crown is called content,—a crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Third Part 3.1

“What makes robbers bold but too much lenity?” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Third Part 2.6

“Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Third Part 2.5

“Unreasonable creatures feed their young; and though man’s face be fearful to their eyes, yet, in protection of their tender ones, who hath not seen them,—even with those wings which sometimes they have us’d with fearful flight,—make war with him that climb’d unto their nest, offering their own lives in their young’s defence?” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Third Part 2.2

“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.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Third Part 2.2

“Many strokes, though with a little axe, hew down and fell the hardest-timber’d oak.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Third Part 2.1

“He that is truly dedicate to war hath no self-love, nor he that loves himself hath not essentially but by circumstance the name of valor.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Second Part 5.2

“It is great sin to swear unto a sin. But greater sin to keep a sinful oath. Who can be bound by any solemn vow to do a murderous deed, to rob a man, to force a spotless virgin’s chastity, to reave the orphan of his patrimony, to wring the widow from her custom’d right, and have no other reason for this wrong but that he was bound by a solemn oath?” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Second Part 5.1

“Small things make base men proud.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Second Part 4.1

“Small curs are not regarded when they grin; but great men tremble when the lion roars.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Second Part 3.1

“Sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud: and after summer evermore succeeds barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold: so cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – Second Part 2.4

“Of all base passions fear is most accurs’d.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – First Part 5.2

“Care is no cure, but rather corrosive, for things that are not to be remedied.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry VI – First Part 3.3

“To cause wit in others, you must learn how to be laughed at, how to absorb it, and finally how to triumph over it, in high good humor.” – Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

“The insolence of power is stronger than the plea of necessity. The tamed submission to usurped authority or even the natural resistance to it, has nothing to excite or flatter the imagination: it is the assumption of a right to insult or oppress others that carries an imposing air of superiority with it. We had rather be the oppressor than the oppressed. The love of power in ourselves and the admiration of it in others are both natural to man: the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave. Wrong dressed out in pride, pomp, and circumstance, has more attraction than abstract right.” – William Hazlitt (quoted in Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human)

“Word choices frame our discourse on every subject, and to a large extent govern the range of our thinking.” – Ed Walker, “Index And Introduction To The Subject And Power By Michel Foucault”