Month: October 2026

“But to die, and go we know not where, to lie in cold obstruction and to rot, this sensible warm motion to become a kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit to bathe in fiery floods, or to reside in thrilling region of thick-ribbèd ice, to be imprisoned in the viewless winds and blown with restless violence round about the pendent world; or to be worse than worst of those that lawless and incertain thought imagine howling—’tis too horrible. The weariest and most loathèd worldly life that age, ache, penury, and imprisonment can lay on nature is a paradise to what we fear of death.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 3.1

“The sense of death is most in apprehension; and the poor beetle that we tread upon, in corporal sufferance finds a pang as great as when a giant dies.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 3.1

“Be absolute for death. Either death or life shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing that none but fools would keep. A breath thou art, servile to all the skyey influences that doth this habitation where thou keep’st hourly afflict. Merely, thou art death’s fool, for him thou labor’st by thy flight to shun, and yet runn’st toward him still. Thou art not noble, for all th’ accommodations that thou bear’st are nursed by baseness. Thou ’rt by no means valiant, for thou dost fear the soft and tender fork of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep, and that thou oft provok’st, yet grossly fear’s thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself, for thou exists on many a thousand grains that issue out of dust. Happy thou art not, for what thou hast not, still thou striv’st to get, and what thou hast, forget’st. Thou art not certain, for thy complexion shifts to strange effects after the moon. If thou art rich, thou ’rt poor, for, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, thou bear’st thy heavy riches but a journey, and death unloads thee. Friend hast thou none, for thine own bowels which do call thee sire, the mere effusion of thy proper loins, do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum for ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age, but as it were an after-dinner’s sleep dreaming on both, for all thy blessèd youth becomes as agèd and doth beg the alms of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich, thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty to make thy riches pleasant. What’s yet in this that bears the name of life? Yet in this life lie hid more thousand deaths; yet death we fear, that makes these odds all even.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 3.1

“The miserable have no other medicine but only hope.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 3.1

“O perilous mouths, that bear in them one and the self-same tongue either of condemnation or approof! Bidding the law make court’sy to their will; hooking both right and wrong to the appetite, to follow as it draws!” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.4

“It oft falls out, to have what we would have, we speak not what we mean.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.4

“Ignominy in ransom and free pardon are of two houses; lawful mercy is nothing akin to foul redemption.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.4

“Let me be ignorant, and in nothing good but graciously to know I am no better.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.4

“O place! O form! How oft dost thou with thy case, thy habit, wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls to thy false seeming?” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.4

“Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.2

“Thieves for their robbery have authority when judges steal themselves.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.2

“The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.2

“Authority, though it err like others, hath yet a kind of medicine in itself that skins the vice o’ the top.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.2

“That in the captain’s but a choleric word which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.2

“Great men may jest with saints: ’tis wit in them; but, in the less, foul profanation.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.2

“But man, proud man! Dress’d in a little brief authority,—most ignorant of what he’s most assured, his glassy essence,—like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep; who, with our spleens, would all themselves laugh mortal.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.2

“It is excellent to have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.2

“No ceremony that to great ones ’longs, not the king’s crown nor the deputed sword, the marshal’s truncheon nor the judge’s robe, become them with one half so good a grace as mercy does.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.2

“Mercy is not itself, that oft looks so; pardon is still the nurse of second woe.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.1

“Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall: some run from brakes of vice, and answer none; and some condemnéd for a fault alone.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.1

“The jewel that we find, we stoop and take it, because we see it; but what we do not see we tread upon, and never think of it.” – William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure 2.1