Category: Lit & Crit

“All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoy’d.” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice 2.6

“Fast bind, fast find—a proverb never stale in thrifty mind.” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice 2.5

“It is a wise father that knows his own child.” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice 2.2

“An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek—a goodly apple rotten at the heart.” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice 1.3

“I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice 1.2

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice 1.2

“They are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing.” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice 1.2

“There are a sort of men whose visages do cream and mantle like a standing pond, and do a wilful stillness entertain, with purpose to be dress’d in an opinion of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit; as who should say, I am Sir Oracle, and, when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice 1.1 (emphasis in original)

“Now, by two-headed Janus, nature hath framed strange fellows in her time: some that will ever more peep through their eyes, and laugh, like parrots, at a bag-piper: and other of such vinegar aspéct, that they’ll not show their teeth in way of a smile.” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice 1.1

“Avoid all gentile books. For what need have you of alien writings, laws and false prophets which lead the frivolous away from the faith? What do you find lacking in God’s Law that you should seek those gentile fables? If you wish to read histories, you have the books of Kings; if rhetorical and poetic writings, you have the Prophets, you have Job, you have the Proverbs, wherein you will find a sagacity that is greater than that of all poetry and sophistry since those are the words of our Lord who alone is wise. If you have a desire for songs, you have the Psalms, if for ancient genealogies, you have Genesis; if for legal books and precepts, you have the Lord’s glorious Law. So avoid strenuously all alien and diabolical books.” – Apostolic Constitutions (as quoted by Cyril Mango in Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome)

“The archaeological exploration of the Limestone Massif in northern Syria, a region that attained great prosperity thanks to the cultivation of the olive tree, has shown not only the co-existence of large and small holdings, but also a general trend, in the period extending from the fourth to the sixth century [AD], towards the break-up of the bigger estates and the growth of villages composed of relatively well-to-do, independent farmers. While the conditions in the Limestone Massif were probably untypical of the rest of Syria, not to speak of other parts of the Empire, they serve to emphasize the danger of drawing general conclusions from literary and legislative texts.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome

“I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free.” – Adrienne Maree Brown, Emergent Strategy

“For a time I was the managing editor of a literary website. At a conference, someone asked me which writers inspire me and I immediately thought of everyone in the slush pile. For writers and editors alike, the slush pile is often confounding and frustrating, but I see it as a cache of humanity, a pile of hope. Our slush pile is overflowing with people telling their stories despite overwhelming odds.” – Lyz Lenz, “Do our stories matter?”, Men Yell at Me, November 27, 2024

“The beauty of memory rests in its talent for rendering detail, for paying homage to the senses, its capacity to love the particles of life, the richness and idiosyncrasy of our existence. The function of memory, while experienced as intensely personal, is surprisingly political.” – Patricia Hampl, “Memory and Imagination”

“In this swamp of fear, all we have are our words.” – Lyz Lenz, “Do our stories matter?”, Men Yell at Me, November 27, 2024

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” – Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (quoted by Lyz Lenz in “Do our stories matter?”, Men Yell at Me, November 27, 2024)

“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

“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