“What is literature but the expression of moods by the vehicle of symbol and incident?”

“All men live in sufferingI know as few can know,Whether they take the upper roadOr stay content on the low.”

“Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enameling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”

“All art is in the last analysis an endeavor to condense as out of the flying vapor of the world an image of human perfection, and for its own and not for the art's sake.”

“The women that I picked spoke sweet and lowAnd yet gave tongue. "Hound voices" were they all.”

“You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.”

“Come, Lady, die to live.”

“To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune, Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles, And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep No more; and by a sleep, to say we end The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die to sleep, To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub.”

“O! that a man might know The end of this day's business, ere it come; But it sufficeth that the day will end, And then the end is known.”

“Cease to lament for that thou canst not help; and study help for that which thou lamentest.”

“Be still prepared for death: and death or life shall thereby be the sweeter.”

“When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.”

“Earth's a howling wilderness,Truculent with fraud and force.”

“The sea is masculine, the type of active strength. Look, what egg-shells are drifting all over it, each one, like ours, filled with men in ecstasies of terror, alternating with cockney conceit, as the sea is rough or smooth. Is this sad-colored circle an eternal cemetery?”

“Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”

“Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.”

“The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.”

“If ever thou be'st bound in thy scarf and beaten, thou shalt find what it is to be proud of thy bondage.”

“And makes me poor indeed.”

“Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so,To make my end too sudden.”

“Death lies on her like an untimely frost.”

“I despised my arrival on this earth and I despise my departure; it is a tragedy.”

“A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head: Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished: For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

“Were all the letters sun, I could not see one.”

“O most delicate fiend!Who is't can read a woman? Is there more?”

“Hear the meaning within the word.”

“The wound of peace is surety, Surety secure; but modest doubt is called The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches To th' bottom of the worst.”

“Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence, But never tax'd for speech.”

“Tongues I'll hang on every treeThat shall civil sayings show. . . .”