Hath any honour, but honour by thofe honours
That are without him, as place, riches, favour,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit,
Which, when they fall, (as being flipp'ry ftanders)
The love that lean'd on them, as flipp'ry too,
Doth one pluck down another, and together
Die in the fall.
Troilus and Creffida, A. 3. Sc. 7.
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipt them not; and our crimes would defpair, if they were not cherish'd by our virtues.
All's Well that Ends Well, A. 4. Sc. 3.
HYPOCRISY.
To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the ferpent under it. Macbeth, A. 1. Sc. 5.
IMAGINATION.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact:
One fees more devils than vaft hell can hold i
The madman: while the loyer, 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
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to fhape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, A. 5. Sc. 1.
INGRATITUD E.
Ah! when the means are gone, that buy this praise, The breath is gone whereof this praise is made.
Timon of Athens, A. 2. Sc. 2,
There is a kind of character in thy life,
That to th' obferver doth thy hiftory
Fully unfold: thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own fo proper, as to waste
Thyfelf upon thy virtues; they on thee.
Heav'n doth with us, as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves: for if our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd,
But to fine iffues: nor Nature never lends
The smalleft fcruple of her excellence,
But, like a thrifty goddefs, fhe determines
Herself the glory of a creditor,
Meafure for Measure, A. 1.
For within the hollow crown,
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
Keeps Death his court: and there the antic fits
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp ;
Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks;
Infusing him with felf and vain conceit,
As if this flesh, which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable: and, humour'd thus,
Comes at the laft, and with a little pin
Bores through his castle-walls, and-farewell king!
Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw
What's near it with it: it is a maffy wheel
Fix'd on the fummit of the highest mount,
To whofe huge spokes ten thousand leffer things
Are mörtis'd and adjoin'd; which, when it falls,
Each small annexment, petty confequence,
Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone
Did the king figh, but with a general groan.
Hamlet, A. 2. Sc. 3.
LABOUR.
Can fnore upon the flint, when refty floth
Finds the down pillow hard.
In whofe comparison all whites are ink,
Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure
The cygnet's down is harsh, and spirit of fenfe
Hard as the palm of ploughman!
Troilus and Creffida, A. 1. Sc. 1.
And I as rich in having such a jewel,
As twenty feas, if all their fand were pearl,
The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, A. 2. Sc.
MOONLIGHT.
Sit, Feffica: look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patterns of bright gold!
There's not the fmalleft orb, which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel fings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims;
Such harmony is in immortal sounds!
But whilft this muddy vefture of decay
Doth grossly clofe us in, we cannot hear it.
The Merchant of Venice, A. 5. Sc. I.
MORTALITY.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being feven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms:
And then the whining school-boy with his fatchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eye-brow. Then a foldier;
Full of ftrange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel ;
Seeking the bubble reputation,
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin❜d,
With eyes fevere, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wife faws and modern inftances;
And fo he plays his part. The fixth age fhifts
Into the lean and flipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nofe, and pouch on fide;
His youthful hose well fav'd, a world too wide
For his fhrunk thank; and his big manly voice,
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