“The records of the central government (and it should be remembered that the Byzantine Empire was a bureaucratic state par excellence), of the provincial administration, of the Church, of secular landlords, tenants, merchants and shopkeepers have all disappeared. As a result, we have no reliable population figures, no registers of births, marriages and deaths, no trade figures, no taxation figures—practically nothing, in short, that can be counted and used for statistical purposes.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“It is not enough to speak, but to speak true.” – William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream 5.1
“Never can anything be amiss when simpleness and duty tender it.” – William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream 5.1
“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, such shaping fantasies, that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact: one sees more devils than vast hell can hold; that is the madman: the lover, all as frantic, sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt: the poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, and, as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination, that, if it would but apprehend some joy, it comprehends some bringer of that joy; or in the night, imagining some fear, how easy is a bush supposed a bear?” – William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream 5.1
“Reason and love keep little company together now-a-days: the more the pity that some honest neighbours will not make them friends.” – William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream 3.1
“The heresies that men do leave are hated most of those they did deceive.” – William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream 2.3
“Things base and vile, holding no quantity, love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love’s mind of any judgment taste; wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: and therefore is love said to be a child, because in choice he is so oft beguiled. As waggish boys in games themselves forswear, so the boy Love is perjur’d everywhere.” – William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1.1
“Brief as the lightning in the collied night that, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, and ere a man hath power to say, Behold! the jaws of darkness devour it up: o quick bright things come to confusion.” – William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1.1
“The course of true love never did run smooth.” – William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream 1.1
“In a world full of wonders man invented boredom.” – Wendy Northcutt, The Darwin Awards: Next Evolution
“How oft when men are at the point of death have they been merry! which their keepers call a lightning before death.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 5.3
“Mischief, thou art swift to enter in the thoughts of desperate men!” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 5.1
“She’s not well married that lives married long; but she’s best married that dies married young.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 4.5
“’Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 4.2
“Venus smiles not in a house of tears.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 4.1
“Some grief shows much of love; but much of grief shows still some want of wit.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 3.2
“Lovers can see to do their amorous rites by their own beauties: or if love be blind, it best agrees with night.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 3.2
“Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 3.1
“They are but beggars that can count their worth.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 2.6
“Violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die; like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume: the sweetest honey is loathsome in his own deliciousness, and in the taste confounds the appetite: therefore love moderately; long love doth so; too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 2.6
“Love’s heralds should be thoughts, which ten times faster glide than the sun’s beams, driving back shadows over lowering hills.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 2.5
“Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye, and where care lodges sleep will never lie; but where unbruised youth with unstuff’d brain doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 2.3
“The earth, that’s nature’s mother, is her tomb; what is her burying grave, that is her womb: and from her womb children of divers kind we sucking on her natural bosom find; many for many virtues excellent, none but for some, and yet all different. O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies in herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities: for naught so vile that on the earth doth live but to the earth some special good doth give; nor aught so good but, strain’d from that fair use, revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse: virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied; and vice sometimes by action dignified.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 2.3
“How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night, like softest music to attending ears.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 2.2
“Love goes toward love as school-boys from their books; but love from love, toward school with heavy looks.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 2.2
“At lovers’ perjuries they say Jove laughs.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 2.2
“Stony limits cannot hold love out: and what love can do, that dares love attempt.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 2.2
“When good manners shall lie all in one or two men’s hands, and they unwashed too, ’tis a foul thing.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 1.5
“I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy; which is as thin of substance as the air, and more inconstant than the wind, who wooes even now the frozen bosom of the north, and, being anger’d, puffs away from thence, turning his face to the dew-dropping south.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 1.4
“Is love a tender thing? it is too rough, too rude, too boisterous; and it pricks like thorn.” – William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet 1.4