King Lear

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by William Shakespeare

Nothing will come of nothing: speak again. (Lear, I.i)
Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth: I love your majesty according to my bond; nor more nor less. (Cordelia, I.i)
Come not between the dragon and his wrath. (Lear, I.i)
Tis the infirmity of his age; yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself. (Regan, I.i)
Now, gods, stand up for bastards! (Edmund, I.ii)
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune,often the surfeit of our own behaviour,we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! (Edmund, I.ii)
Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, more hideous, when thou show'st thee in a child, than the sea-monster. (Lear, I.iv)
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child! (Lear, I.iv)
Striving to better, oft we mar what's well. (Albany, I.iv)
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! (Lear, III.ii)
I am a man more sinn'd against than sinning. (Lear, III.ii)
Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, that bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, how shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you from seasons such as these? O! I have ta'en too little care of this. Take physic, pomp; expose thyself to feel what wretches feel.(Lear, III.iv)
Child Rowland to the dark tower came, his word was still, Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man. (Edgar, III.iv)
Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell His way to Dover. (Regan, III.vii)
I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled when I saw. (Gloucester, IV.i)
the worst is not, So long as we can say, ‘This is the worst.’ (Edgar, IV.i)
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport. (Gloucester, IV.i)
Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile; filths savour but themselves. (Albany, IV.ii)
Ay, every inch a king: when I do stare, see how the subject quakes. I pardon that man's life.—What was thy cause?— Adultery?— thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No: the wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive; for Gloster's bastard son was kinder to his father than my daughters got 'tween the lawful sheets. To't, luxury, pell-mell! for I lack soldiers.— Behold yond simpering dame, whose face between her forks presages snow; that minces virtue, and does shake the head to hear of pleasure's name;— the fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't with a more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are centaurs, though women all above: but to the girdle do the gods inherit, beneath is all the fiend's; there's hell, there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit; burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie! pah, pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination: there's money for thee. (Lear, IV.vi)
O! let me kiss that hand! Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality. (Gloucester/Lear, IV.vi)
When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools. (Lear, IV.vi)
Come, let's away to prison; we two alone will sing like birds i' the cage. (Lear, V.iii)
Howl, howl, howl, howl! O! you are men of stones: had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so that heaven's vaults should crack. She's gone for ever. I know when one is dead, and when one lives; she's dead as earth. (Lear, V.iii)
And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life! Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more, never, never, never, never, never! (Lear, V.iii)
The weight of this sad time we must obey; speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young, shall never see so much, nor live so long. (Edgar, V.iii)