and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table; that's the end. Hamlet. Act IV, Sc. 3.

Death and Birth

The
Monster
Dis-
guised

The
Last
Reckon-
ing

M

EN must endure

Their going hence, even as their coming hither:

Ripeness is all.

DE

King Lear. Act V, Sc. 2.

EATH. . . . being an ugly monster,
'Tis strange he hides him in fresh cups,
soft beds,

Sweet words.

A

HEAVY reckoning for you, sir. But the comfort is, you shall be called to no more payments, fear no more tavern-bills, which are often the sadness of parting, as the procuring of mirth. You come in faint for want of meat, depart reeling with too much drink; sorry that you have paid too much, and sorry that you are paid too much; purse and brain both empty; the brain the heavier for being too light, the purse too light, being

drawn of heaviness. O, of this contradiction you shall now be quit. O, the charity of a penny cord! It sums up thousands in a trice. Cymbeline. Act V, Sc. 4.

I

MELANCHOLY

H, HOW full of briars is this working-day This
HOW us You Like It. Act 1, Sc. 3.

world! As

HAVE of late-but wherefore I know not -lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercise; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of

World

Dust

and

Vapor

animals! And yet, to me, what is this quinHamlet. Act II, Sc. 2.

tessence of dust?

The Ways of the

O

World

Vice

Sorrows

THAT this too too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God!
God!

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!

Fie on 't! Oh fie, fie! 'Tis an unweeded
garden,

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in

nature

Possess it merely.

Hamlet. Act I, Sc. 2.

- of

OR in the fatness of these pursy times, Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good. Hamlet. Act III, Sc. 4.

WH

HEN sorrows come, they come not single spies,

But in battalions. Hamlet. Act IV, Sc. 5.

THE

HE ample proposition that hope makes
In all designs begun on earth below
Fails in the promis'd largeness. Checks and
disasters

Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd,
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap,
Infect the sound pine and divert his grain
Tortive and errant from his course of growth.
Troilus and Cressida. Act I, Sc. 3.

HE miserable have no other medicine
But only hope.

ΤΗ

Measure for Measure. Act III, Sc. 1.

HEAVENS, what some men do,
While some men leave to do!

How some men creep in skittish Fortune's
hall,

Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes!
How one man eats into another's pride
While pride is fasting in his wantonness!

Troilus and Cressida. Act III, Sc. 3.

The Failure of Hope

A Medicine for Misery

Unreason

The
Angels'
Sorrow

"Bless Them

that

Curse

You"

The Worst?

M

ERCIFUL Heaven,

Thou rather with thy sharp and sul-
phurous bolt

Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle; but man, proud man,
Dres'd in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep; who, with our
spleens,

Would all themselves laugh mortal.

'D

Measure for Measure. Act II, Sc. 2.

I'Fohave the live, 'tis happiness to die.

Othello. Act V, Sc. 2.

GODS! Who is't can say, “I am at the

I am worse than e'er I was.

And worse I may be yet; the worst is not
So long as we can say, "This is the worst."
King Lear. Act IV, Sc. 1.