quotes by Dramatist Quotes

“Strong reasons make strong actions let us go If you say ay, the king will not say no.”

“Come, and take choice of all my library, And so beguile thy sorrow.”

“That is the injustice of a woman's lot. A woman has to bring up her children; and that means to restrain them, to deny them things they want, to set them tasks, to punish them when they do wrong, to do all the unpleasant things. And then the father, who has nothing to do but pet them and spoil them, comes in when all her work is done and steals their affection from her.”

“Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion”

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

“What? do I love her, that I desire to hear her speak again, and feast upon her eyes”

“Experience is by industry achieved, And perfected by the swift course of time.”

“You draw me, you hard-hearted adamant;But yet you draw not iron, for my heartIs true as steel: leave you your power to draw,And I shall have no power to follow you.”

“Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but, being in, bear t that th' opposed may beware of thee.”

“I have never admitted the right of an elderly author to alter the work of a young author, even when the young author happens to be his former self.”

“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?”

“He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May.”

“Fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings, the husband's the bigger.”

“Take you me for a sponge?”

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

“Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honour false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons”

“Tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age, Conferring them on younger strengths, while we Unburdened crawl toward death.”

“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.”

“Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds.”

“Haply a woman's voice may do some goodWhen articles too nicely urged be stood on.”

“If I refuse to allow my leg to be amputated, its mortification and my death may prove that I was wrong; but if I let the leg go, nobody can ever prove that it would not have mortified had I been obstinate. Operation is therefore the safe side for the surgeon as well as the lucrative side.”

“To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer.”

“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.”

“If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide, By self-example mayst thou be denied.”

“Let a short Act of Parliament be passed, placing all street musicians outside the protection of the law, so that any citizenmay assail them with stones, sticks, knives, pistols or bombs without incurring any penalties.”

“What is the city but the people?”

“When lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner”

“A good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a black beard will turn white; a curl'd pate will grow bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax hollow: but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon, — for it shines bright, and never changes, but keeps his course truly.”

“Truly the souls of men are full of dread: Ye cannot reason almost with a man That looks not heavily and full of fear.”

“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.”

“For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground, and tell sad stories of the death of kings... All murdered; for within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king, keeps Death his court... and with a little pin bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!”

“I should think this a gull, but that the white-bearded fellow speaks it; knavery cannot, sure, hide himself in such reverence.”

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

“Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.”

“thus with a kiss I die”

“What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused.”

“Do not speak like a death's-head, do not bid me remember mine end.”

“Thus hath the candle sing'd the moth. O these deliberate fools!”

“Report of fashions in proud Italy Whose manners still our tardy-apish nation Limps after in base imitation”

“There's not a shirt and a half in all my company, and the halfshirt is two napkins tacked together and thrown over theshoulders like a herald's coat without sleeves.”

“Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?”

“I love a ballad but even too well if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably.”

“I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking: I could well wish courtesy would invent some other custom of entertainment.”

“He's truly valiant that can wisely suffer The worst that man can breathe, and make his wrongs His outsides, to wear them like his raiment, carelessly, And ne'er prefer his injuries to his heart, To bring it into danger.”

“Oh, come! That boot is on the other leg. Why should you call me to account for eating decently? If I battened on the scorched corpses of animals, you might well ask me why I did that”

“No metal can--no, not the hangman's axe--bear half the keenness of thy sharp envy.”

“They whose guilt within their bosom lies, imagine every eye beholds their blame.”

“A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers.”

“Our rash faultsMake trivial price of serious thing we have,Not knowing them until we know their grave.”

“Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.”