Measure for Measure Quotes

“Our doubts are traitors,
and make us lose the good we oft might win,
by fearing to attempt.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know. ”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Life... is a paradise to what we fear of death.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“It is excellent / To have a giant's strenght / But it is tyrannous / To use it like a giant

(Isabella)”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“But man, proud man,
Dress'd in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd—
His glassy essence—like an angry ape
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“What's his offense?
Groping for trout in a peculiar river.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all!
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall:
Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none:
And some condemned for a fault alone.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“O, it is excellent
To have a giant's strenght, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Thou hast nor youth nor age
But as it were an after dinner sleep
Dreaming of both.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Thy best of rest is sleep,
And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st
Thy death, which is no more.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope:
I have hope to live, and am prepared to die.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“I'll be supposed upon a book, his face is the worst thing about him.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“He who the sword of heaven will bear
Should be as holy as severe;
Pattern in himself to know,
Grace to stand, and virtue go;
More nor less to others paying
Than by self-offences weighing.
Shame to him whose cruel striking
Kills for faults of his own liking!
Twice treble shame on Angelo,
To weed my vice and let his grow!
O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!
How may likeness made in crimes,
Making practise on the times,
To draw with idle spiders' strings
Most ponderous and substantial things!
Craft against vice I must apply:
With Angelo to-night shall lie
His old betrothed but despised;
So disguise shall, by the disguised,
Pay with falsehood false exacting,
And perform an old contracting.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Music oft hath such a charm
To make bad good, and good provoke to harm.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty
As surfeit is the father of much fast,
So every scope of the immoderate use
Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue, -
Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, -
A thirsty evil; and when we drink we die.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“To sue to live, I find I seek to die;
And, seeking death, find life.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope:
I've hope to live, and am prepared to die.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Life is better life past fearing death,
Than that which lives to fear.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
Another thing to fall."
- Angelo, Act 2 Scene 1”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“That in the captain's but a choleric word,
Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Let me hear you speak farther. I have spirit to do anything that appears not foul in the truth of my spirit.”
― William Shakespeare , Measure for Measure

“I had as lief have the foppery of freedom as the morality of imprisonment.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Merely, thou art death's fool,
For him thou labor'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet run'st toward him still.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“What's yet in this
That bears the name of life? Yet in this life
Lie hid moe thousand deaths; yet death we fear,
That makes these odds all even.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Alack, when once our grace we have forgot,
Nothing goes right; we would and we would not.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Raciocinai assim com a vida: Se te perco, perco uma coisa que somente os loucos querem conservar. Não passas de um sopro, exposto a todas as influências do ar e que, hora após hora, deterioram esta habitação em que moras. És meramente o joquete da morte, pois procuras sempre evitá-la pela fuga e, apesar disto, corres sempre em direção a ela. Não és nobre, porque todas as voluptuosidades, que são teu patrimônio, são acalentadas pelas baixezas. Estás longe de ser valente, pois temes o aguilhão terno e brando de um verme. O que tens de melhor em ti é o sono e que tantas vezes provocas; entretanto, temes grosseiramente a morte que não passa de um sono. Tu não és tu mesmo, pois tua existência é o resultado de milhares de grãos que saem do pó. Não és feliz, porque o que tu não tens, tu te esforças para adquirir e o que possuis, tu esqueces. Não és constante, pois tua natureza, segundo as fases da Lua, sofre estranhas alterações. Se és rico, és pobre; pois, semelhante a um asno cujo lombo está vergado ao peso de lingotes, só carregas as tuas riquezas um único dia e a morte te livra delas. Não tens amigos, pois o fruto de tuas próprias entranhas que te chama de ''pai'', o mais puro de teu sangue saído de teus próprios rins, maldiz a gota, a lepra e o catarro, que não te acabam bem depressa. Não tens juventude nem velhice, e, por assim dizer, não passas de um sesta depois do jantar que sonha um pouco com as duas idades; pois toda tua feliz juventude é passada fazendo-se velha e solicitando esmolas da paralítica velhice. Quando, no fim, fores velho e rico, já não terás calor, sentimento, força, nem beleza, para tornares agradáveis tuas riquezas.Que te sobra ainda nisto que traz o nome de Vida? O outras mil formas de morte ainda estão ocultas nesta vida e, contudo tememos a morte que nivela todas estas misérias.”
― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure