“thy bones are hollow, impiety has made a
feast of thee.”
(Lucio, 1.2, 50-51)
“Thus can the demigod Authority
Make us pay down our offence, by weight,
The bonds of heaven.”
(Claudio, 1.2, 100-102)
“We have strict statutes and most biting laws,
The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds,”
(Duke, 1.3, 19-20)
“I hold you as a thing enskied and sainted
By your renouncement, an immortal spirit,
And to be talked with in sincerity
As with a saint.”
(Lucio, 1.4, 33-36)
“a man whose blodd
Is very snow-broth; one who never feels
The wanton stings and motions of the sense,
But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge
With profits of the mind, study and fast.”
(Lucio, 1.4, 56-60)
“And let him learn to know, when maidens sue,
Men give like gods, but when they weep and kneel,
All their petitions are as freely theirs
As they themselves would owe them.”
(Lucio, 1.4, 80-83)
“We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape till custom make it
Their perch, and not their terror.”
(Angelo, 2.1, 1-4)
“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.
Some fun from brakes of vice, and answer none;
And some condemned for a fault alone.”
(Escalus, 2.1, 38-40)
“Mercy is not itself that oft looks so.
Pardon is still the nurse of second woe.”
(Escalus, 2.1, 253-254)
“Why, all the souls that were forfeit once,
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy.”
(Isabella, 2.2, 75-77)
“Those many had not dared to do that evil
If the first that did th’edict infringe
Had answered for his deed.”
(Angelo, 2.2, 93-95)
“O, it is excellent
To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.”
(Isabella, 2.2, 109-111)
“Great men may jest with saints; ‘tis wit in them,
But in the less, foul profanation.”
(Isabella, 2.2, 130-131)
“Can it be
That modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman’s lightness?”
(Angelo, 2.2, 172-174)
“Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue.”
(Angelo, 2.2, 185-187)
“O place, O form,
How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit,
Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls
To thy false seeming!”
(Angelo, 2.4, 12-15)
“Better it were a brother died at once
Than that a sister, by redeeming him,
Should die for ever.”
(Isabella, 2.4, 107-109)
“Ignominy in ransom and free pardon
Are of two houses; lawful mercy
Is nothing kin to foul redemption.”
(Isabella, 2.4, 112-114)
“It oft falls out
To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean.
I something do excuse the thing I hate
For his advantage that I dearly love.”
(Isabella, 2.4, 118-121)
“The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope.”
(Claudio, 3.1, 2-3)
“Merely thou art death’s fool,
For him thou labour’st by thy flight to shun,
And yet runn’st toward him still.”
(Duke, 3.1, 11-13)
“Yet in this life
Lie hid more thousand deaths; yet death we fear that makes
these odds all even.”
(Duke, 3.1, 39-41)
“None but such remedy, to save a head,
To cleave a heart in twain.”
(Isabella, 3.1, 59-60)
“The sense of death is most in apprehension,
And the poor beetle that we tread upon
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
Was when a giant dies.”
(Isabella, 3.1,, 77-79)
“The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.”
(Claudio, 3.1, 129-132)
“What sin you do to save a brother’s life,
Nature dispenses with the deed so far
That it becomes a virtue.”
(Claudio, 3.1, 135-137)
“The goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief
in goodness; but grace, being the soul of your complexion,
shall keep the body of it ever fair.”
(Duke, 3.1, 182-184)
“There is scarce
Truth enough alive to make societies secure, but security
enough to make fellowships accursed. Much upon this
riddle runs the wisdom of the world.”
(Duke, 3.1, 451-454)
“Drunk many times a day, if not many days entirely
drunk.”
(Provost, 4.2, 139)
“But I will keep her ignorant of her good,
To make her heavenly comforts of despair
When it is least expected.”
(Duke, 4.3, 101-103)
“O, your desert speaks loud, and I should wrong it
To lock it in the wards of covert bosom,
When it deserves with characters of brass
A forted residence ‘gainst the tooth of time
And razure of oblivion.”
(Duke, 5.1, 9-13)
“O worthy prince, dishonour not your eye
By throwing it on any other object,”
(Isabella, 5.1, 22-23)
“If he be less, he’s nothing; but he’s more,
Had I more name for badness.”
(Isabella, 5.1, 58-59)
“If she be mad, as I believe no other,
Her madness hath the oddest frame of sense,
Such a dependency of thing on thing
As e’er I heard in madness.”
(Duke, 5.1, 60-63)
“Heaven shield your grace from woe,
As I, thus wronged, hence unbelieved go.”
(Isabella, 5.1, 118-119)
“Partly for that her promised proportions
Came short of composition, but in chief
For that her reputation was disvalued
In levity;”
(Angelo, 5.1, 216-219)
“I should be guiltier than my guiltiness
To think I can be undiscernible,
When I perceive your grace, like power divine,
Hath looked upon my passes.”
(Angelo, 5.1, 359-362)
“That life is better life, past fearing death,
Than that which lives to fear.”
(Duke, 5.1, 389-390)
“They say best men are moulded out of faults,
And, for the most, becomes much more the better
For being a little bad.”
(Mariana, 5.1, 432-434)
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