“Omittance is not quittance.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 3.5
Month: February 2026
“All’s brave that youth mounts and folly drives.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 3.4
“Was is not is.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 3.4 (emphases in original)
“When a man’s verses cannot be understood, nor a man’s good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 3.3
“Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do: and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 3.2
“I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 3.2
“It is as easy to count atomies as to resolve the propositions of a lover.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 3.2
“I am a true labourer; I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness; glad of other men’s good, content with my harm.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 3.2
“Those things that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country as the behaviour of the country is most mockable at the court.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 3.2
“He that hath learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of good breeding, or comes of a very dull kindred.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 3.2
“He that wants money, means, and content, is without three good friends.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 3.2
“Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 2.7
“Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude; thy tooth is not so keen.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 2.7
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. At first the infant, mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms; then the whining school-boy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school. And then the lover, sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier, full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, seeking the bubble reputation, even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, in fair round belly with good capon lin’d, with eyes severe and beard of formal cut, full of wise saws and modern instances; and so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon, with spectacles on nose and pouch on side; his youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide for his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, turning again toward childish treble, pipes and whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, is second childishness and mere oblivion; sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 2.7
“He that a fool doth very wisely hit doth very foolishly, although he smart, not to seem senseless of the bob; if not, the wise man’s folly is anatomiz’d even by the squandering glances of the fool.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 2.7
“Call me not fool till heaven hath sent me fortune.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 2.7
“Where civil liberty is entire, it includes liberty of conscience; where liberty of conscience is entire it includes civil liberty.” – James Harrington, Political Aphorisms
“The fact that there is a Puritan doctrine of liberty, whatever its limitations, is immensely important. Repeatedly Puritanism brings the question of liberty up for discussion, and this is a major service. While operating within the prescribed bounds of ‘Christian’ liberty, Puritanism, further, does a great deal to foster the notion of individuality, and an individualistic outlook, with results partially, though not wholly, favourable to democracy.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“Nothing stokes human creativity like the desire to kill a motherfucker you don’t like.” – The Fat Electrician, “America’s Secret Weapon That Won WW2 – VT Fuze”
“Men in all ages have, through their supine carelessness, degenerated from the righteousness of their first principles.” – The Worshipful Company of Saddlers (quoted by A. S. P. Woodhouse in Puritanism & Liberty)
“The function of the state is to preserve peace and order and to guarantee the freedom of the individual; a wise government will be more willing to repeal old laws than to enact new ones, for the intention of laws is to check the commission of vice, but liberty is the best school of virtue.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“Human nature being what it was, a measure of democracy was the best protection against tyranny.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“Objectives in practical politics are always limited and generally selfish.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty
“We that are true lovers run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 2.4
“To some kind of men their graces serve them but as enemies.” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 2.3
“How full of briers is this working-day world!” – William Shakespeare, As You Like It 1.3
“The true temper and proper employment of a Christian is always to be working like the sea, and purging ignorance out of his understanding and exchanging notions and apprehensions imperfect for more perfect, and forgetting things behind to press forward.” – Henry Robinson, Liberty and Conscience
“The strong Puritan impulse to action results in the constant intrusion of religion into the secular sphere in an effort to enforce the standards of the holy community upon the world, and in a marked tendency to press on, in the name of that ideal, from the quest for religious liberty to the quest for political power.” – A. S. P. Woodhouse, Puritanism & Liberty