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Quotes by Dramatist

"By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, but music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night and his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music."

"Benedick: I protest I love thee.Beatrice: Why, then, God forgive me!Benedick: What offence, sweet Beatrice?Beatrice: You have stayed me in a happy hour: I was about toprotest I loved you.Benedick: And do it with all thy heart.Beatrice: I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest."

"The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life."

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will."

"The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life."

"My only policy is to profess evil and do good."

"Whate'er I read to her. I'll plead for youAs for my patron, stand you so assured,As firmly as yourself were in still place - Yea, and perhaps with more successful wordsThan you, unless you were a scholar, sir.O this learning, what a thing it is!"

"There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting."

"This rough magicI here abjure, and, when I have requiredSome heavenly music, which even now I do,To work mine end upon their senses thatThis airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,And deeper than did ever plummet soundI'll drown my book."

"Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep."

"But then I sigh, with a piece of ScriptureTell them that God bids us to do evil for good; And thus I clothe my naked villanyWith odd old ends stolen out of Holy Writ;And seem a saint, when most I play the devil."

"Thou, my slave,As thou report'st thyself, was then her servant,And for thou wast a spirit too delicateTo act her earthy and abhorred commands,Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,By help of her more potent ministersAnd in her most unmitigable rage,Into a cloven pine, within which riftImprisoned thou didst painfully remainA dozen years; within which space she diedAnd left thee there, where thou didst vent thy groansAs fast as mill wheels strike."

"Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out."

"Taffeta phrases silken terms precise Three-piled hyperboles spruce affectation Figures pedantical."

"If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me."

"It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right."

"Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness."

"Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.Put out the light, and then put out the light:If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,I can again thy former light restore,Should I repent me: but once put out thy light,Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,I know not where is that Promethean heatThat can thy light relume."

"Live by the words of intelligence endured..F@&$ IT!"
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