Lust is but a bloody fire,
Kindled with unchaste desire,
Fed in heart whose flames aspire
As thoughts do blow them higher and higher.

Act 5, Sc. 5.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

Duke.

Thyself and thy belongings
Are not thine own so proper, as to waste
Thyself upon thy virtues, them on thee.
Heaven 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.-Act I, Sc. I.

Duke. Believe not that the dribbling dart of love

Can pierce a complete bosom. Why I desire thee
To give me secret harbour, hath a purpose
More grave and wrinkled than the aims and ends
Of burning youth.-Act I, Sc. 3.

Duke.

As fond fathers,
Having bound up the threat’ning twigs of birch,
Only to stick it in their children's sight
For terror, not to use, in time the rod
Becomes more mock'd than fear'd ; so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead ;
And liberty plucks justice by the nose ;
The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum.-Act I, Sc. 3.

Lucio. Our doubts are traitors,

And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.--Act I, Sc. 4.

Ang. We must not make a scare-crow 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. Act 2, Sc. 1.

Escal. Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall :

Some run from brakes of vice, and answer none :
And some condemned for a fault alone.—Act 2, Sc. I.

Escal. Mercy is not itself, that oft looks so ;

Pardon is still the nurse of second woe.-Act 2, Sc. 1.

Ang. Condemn the fault, but not the actor of it ?

Act 2, Sc. 2.

Isab. 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.

Act 2, Sc. 2.

Isab. 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.

Act 2, Sc. 2.

Isab.

O, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant !

Act 2, Sc. 2.

Isab.

Merciful Heaven !
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt,
Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle ; but man, proud man !

Dress'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 make the angels weep.

Act 2, Sc. 2.

Isab. Great men may jest with saints, 'tis wit in them,

But in the less foul profanation. Act 2, Sc. 2.

Isab. That in the captain's but a choleric word,

Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.—Act 2, Sc. 2.

Ang. So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons;

Come all to help him, and so stop the air
By which he should revive.

Act 2, Sc. 4.

Claud, The miserable have no other medicine,
But only hope.

Act 3, Sc. 1.

Isab. 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.

Act 3, Sc. 1.

Claud. Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;

To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world ; or to be worse than worst
Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts
Imagine howling ; 'tis too horrible !

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.-Act 3, Sc. I. Duke. The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good ; 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 fạir.— Act 3, Sc. 1.

Duke. That we were all, as some would seem to be,
Free from our faults, as faults from seeming free !

Act 3, Sc. 2.

Duke. No might nor greatness in mortality

Can censure 'scape; back-wounding calumny
The whitest virtue strikes. What king so strong
Can tie the gall up in the slanderous tongue ?

Act 3, Sc. 2.

Duke. He who the sword of Heaven will bear,

Should be as holy as severe ;
Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go ;
More or less to others paying,
Than by self offences weighing.
Shame to him, whose cruel striking
Kills for faults of his own liking ! Act 3, Sc. 2.

Boy.* Take, oh take, those lips away,

That so sweetly were forsworn ;
And those eyes, the break of day,

Lights that do mislead the morn :
But my kisses bring again, bring again ;
Seals of love, but sealed in vain, sealed in vain.

Act 4, Sc. I. * This song is also given in Fletcher's play, “The Bloody Brother," Act Sc. with the addition of a second verse.

5,

2,

Duke. Music oft hath such a charm
To make bad good, and good provoke to harm.

Act 4, Sc. 1.

Duke. O place and greatness ! millions of false eyes

Are stuck upon thee! Volumes of report
Run with these false and most contrarious quests
Upon thy doings ! thousand escapes of wit
Make thee the father of their idle dream,
And rack thee in their fancies.

Act 4, Sc. 1.

Abhor. Every true man's apparel fits your

thief. Pro. If it be too little for your thief, your true man thinks it big enough ; if it be too big for your thief, your thief thinks it little enough: so every true man's apparel fits your thief.

Act 4, Sc. 2.

Isab.

'Tis a physic,
That's bitter to sweet end.—Act 4, Sc. 6.

Duke.

Laws for all faults,
But faults so countenanc'd, that the strong statutes
Stand like the forfeits in a barber's shop,
As much in mock as mark. -Act 5, Sc. I.

Mari. They say, best men are moulded out of faults;

And for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad. --Act 5, Sc. I.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS.

Ant. S. He that commends me to mine own content,

Commends me to the thing I cannot get.
I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who failing there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself:--Act I, Sc. 2.