Julius Caesar

by William Shakespeare

You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome, Knew you not Pompey?

And when you saw his chariot but appear, Have you not made an universal shout, That Tiber trembled underneath her banks, To hear the replication of your sounds Made in her concave shores?

Assemble all the poor men of your sort; Draw them to Tiber banks, and weep your tears Into the channel, till the lowest stream Do kiss the most exalted shores of all.

When Caesar says 'do this,' it is perform'd.

Beware the ides of March.

No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself, But by reflection, by some other things.

'Tis just: And it is very much lamented, Brutus, That you have no such mirrors as will turn Your hidden worthiness into your eye, That you might see your shadow.

So well as by reflection, I, your glass, Will modestly discover to yourself That of yourself which you yet know not of.

if you know That I do fawn on men and hug them hard And after scandal them, or if you know That I profess myself in banqueting To all the rout, then hold me dangerous.

If it be aught toward the general good, Set honour in one eye and death i' the other, And I will look on both indifferently, For let the gods so speed me as I love The name of honour more than I fear death.

I do believe that these applauses are For some new honours that are heap'd on Caesar.

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus, and we petty men Walk under his huge legs and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves.

Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that 'Caesar'? Why should that name be sounded more than yours? Write them together, yours is as fair a name; Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well; Weigh them, it is as heavy; con...

There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome As easily as a king.

Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this: Brutus had rather be a villager Than to repute himself a son of Rome

I am glad that my weak words Have struck but thus much show of fire from Brutus.

Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights: Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort As if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit

Such men as he be never at heart's ease Whiles they behold a greater than themselves, And therefore are they very dangerous.

I rather tell thee what is to be fear'd Than what I fear; for...

I can as well be hanged as tell the manner of it: it was mere foolery;

but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.

Ay, if I be alive and your mind hold and your dinner worth the eating.

This rudeness is a sauce to his good wit, Which gives men stomach to digest his words With better appetite.

For who so firm that cannot be seduced?

But men may construe things after their fashion, Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.

So every bondman in his own hand bears The power to cancel his captivity.

O, he sits high in all the people's hearts: And that which would appear offence in us, His countenance, like richest alchemy, Will change to virtue and to worthiness.

It is the bright day that brings forth the adder; And that craves wary walking.

The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins Remorse from power:

But 'tis a common proof, That lowliness is young ambition's ladder, Whereto the climber-upward turns his face; But when he once attains the upmost round. He then unto the ladder turns his back, Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend.

And therefore think him as a serpent's egg Which, hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous, And kill him in the shell.

Sir, March is wasted fourteen days.

O conspiracy, Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night, When evils are most free? O, then by day Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, conspiracy; Hide it in smiles and affability: For if thou path, thy native semblance on, Not Erebus itself were dim enough To hide thee from prevention.

O, let us have him, for his silver hairs Will purchase us a good opinion And buy men's voices to commend our deeds: It shall be said, his judgment ruled our hands; Our youths and wildness shall no whit appear, But all be buried in his gravity.

O, name him not: let us not break with him; For he will never follow any thing That other men begin.

To cut the head off and then hack the limbs, Like wrath in death and envy afterwards; For Antony is but a limb of Caesar:

And for Mark Antony, think not of him; For he can do no more than Caesar's arm When Caesar's head is off.

for he loves to hear That unicorns may be betray'd with trees, And bears with glasses, elephants with holes, Lions with toils and men with flatterers; But when I tell him he hates flatterers, He says he does, being then most flattered.

danger knows full well That Caesar is more dangerous than he: We are two lions litter'd in one day, And I the elder and more terrible:

CAESAR [To the Soothsayer] The ides of March are come. Soothsayer Ay, Caesar; but not gone.

These couchings and these lowly courtesies Might fire the blood of ordinary men, And turn pre-ordinance and first decree Into the law of children.

But I am constant as the northern star, Of whose true-fix'd and resting quality There is no fellow in the firmament.

Et tu, Brute! Then fall, Caesar.

People and senators, be not affrighted; Fly not; stand stiff: ambition's debt is paid.

let no man abide this deed, But we the doers.

CASSIUS Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life Cuts off so many years of fearing death. BRUTUS Grant that, and then is death a benefit: So are we Caesar's friends, that have abridged His time of fearing death.

How many ages hence Shall this our lofty scene be acted over In states unborn and accents yet unknown!

A curse shall light upon the limbs of men; Domestic fury and fierce civil strife Shall cumber all the parts of Italy; Blood and destruction shall be so in use And dreadful objects so familiar That mothers shall but smile when they behold Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;