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Our doubts are traitors And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt.
It’s one thing to be tempted, Escalus, but another thing to give in.
Oh, how often do rank and ceremonial trappings impress the foolish and entrap even the wise! Passions are passions—they cannot simply be swept away. You can write “good angel” on the devil’s horns, but that doesn’t change his devilish nature.
Heaven may regard the two sins as equal, but humans do not.
Legal mercy is in no way related to an immoral rescue.
Women—Heaven help us!—are ruined by men who take advantage of us.
You’re not happy, because you’re always trying to get what you don’t have, and what you do have, you forget about.
CLAUDIO Death is a fearful thing. ISABELLA And a disgraced life a hateful one.
Neither political power nor noble character can escape criticism; even the most virtuous person can be stabbed in the back by slurs. What king is so strong he can bottle up the poison of a slandering tongue?
He who wants to be a ruler and enact heaven’s justice should be as holy as he is severe.
stay awake till you’re executed, and sleep afterward.
I don’t do the good thing, which I don’t want to do, but the evil I don’t want to commit, that I do.6
the truth is the truth, no matter how much you multiply it.
Don’t assume something’s impossible because it’s unlikely.
if only I had more names for badness.
DUKE VINCENTIO No one asked you to speak. LUCIO No, my good lord, but no one asked me to be quiet, either.
Oh, I wish it were as believable as it is true!
“A hood does not make a monk”—his
All due respect to your great office—even the devil gets some respect for being the king of Hell.
Haste always results in hasty decisions,
