There my father's grave

Did utter forth a voice! Yes, thou must die:
Thou art too noble to conserve a life

In base appliances. This outward-sainted deputy,-
Whose settled visage and deliberate word

Nips youth i' the head, and follies doth enmew

As falcon doth the fowl,-is yet a devil;

His filth within being cast, he would appear
A pond as deep as hell.

RESOLUTION.

Our doubts are traitors,

And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.

THE PRAYERS OF MAIDENS EFFECTUAL.

Go to lord Angelo,

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.

MERCY FREQUENTLY MISTAKEN.

Mercy is not itself that oft looks so;
Pardon is still the nurse of second woe.

MERCY IN GOVERNORS COMMENDED.

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.

THE DUTY OF MUTUAL FORGIVENESS.

Alas! alas!

Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy. How would you be,
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made.

* Have.

THE ABUSE OF AUTHORITY.

O, it is excellent

To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

Could great men thunder

As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,
For every pelting, petty officer,

Would use his heaven for thunder; nothing but
Merciful Heaven!

[thunder.

Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,
Splitt'st the unwedgeable, and gnarled oak,
Than the soft myrtle: O, but man, proud man!
Drest 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.

THE PRIVILEGE OF AUTHORITY.

Great men may jest with saints: 'tis wit in them;
But, in the less, foul profanation.

That in the captain's but a choleric word,
Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

TEMPORAL FAR BETTER THAN ETERNAL DEATH.

Better it were a brother died at once,
Than that a sister, by redeeming him,
Should die for ever.

HOPE.

The miserable have no other medicine,
But only hope.

Isab. Ay, with such gifts, that Heaven shall share Lucio. You had marr'd all else.

[with you,

Isab. Not with fond shekels of the tested gold,
Or stones, whose rates are either rich or poor,
As fancy values them: but with true prayers,
That shall be up at heaven, and enter there,
Ere sun-rise; prayers from preserved* souls,
From fasting-maids, whose minds are delicate
To nothing temporal.

* Preserved from the corruption of the world.

THE TERRORS OF DEATH MOST IN APPREHENSION.

O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake,
Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain,
And six or seven winters more respect

Than a perpetual honour. Darest thou die?
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.

REFLECTIONS ON THE VANITY OF LIFE.

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 skiey influences)

That does this habitation, where thou keep'st,
Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool:
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,

And yet runn'st toward him still: thou art not noble;
For all the accommodations that thou bear'st

Are nursed by baseness: thou art 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 provokest; yet grossly fear'st

Thy death, which is no more: thou art not thyself; For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains

That issue out of dust: happy thou art not;

For what thou hast not, still thou strivest to get;
And what thou hast, forgett'st thou art not certain;

For thy complexion shifts to strange effects,*
After the moon: if thou art rich, thou art poor;

For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows,
Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey

*Affects, affections.