“And yet by heaven I think my love as rare / as any that she belie with false compare”

“My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;Coral is far more red than her lips' red;If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,But no such roses see I in her cheeks;And in some perfumes is there more delightThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks.I love to hear her speak, yet well I knowThat music hath a far more pleasing sound;I grant I never saw a goddess go;My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.”

“Prophet may you be!If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,when time is old and hath forgot itself,when waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,and blind oblivion swallowed cities up,and mighty states characterless are gratedto dusty nothing, yet let memory,from false to false, among false maids in love,upbraid my falsehood!”

“It is my lady. O, it is my love!O, that she knew she were!She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?Her eye discourses; I will answer it.I am too bold. ’Tis not to me she speaks.Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,Having some business, do entreat her eyesTo twinkle in their spheres till they return.What if her eyes were there, they in her head?The brightness of her cheek would shame thosestars”

“O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head,Which have no correspondence with true sight!...Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,That censures falsely what they see aright?If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,What means the world to say it is not so?If it be not, then love doth well denoteLove's eye is not so true as all men's 'No.'How can it? O, how can Love's eye be true,That is so vex'd with watching and with tears? No marvel then, though I mistake my view;The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind,Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find. - Shakespeare's Sonnet 148”

“When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,I all alone beweep my outcast state And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless criesAnd look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth bringsThat then I scorn to change my state with kings. a”

“I hold my peace, sir? no;No, I will speak as liberal as the north;Let heaven and men and devils, let them all,All, all, cry shame against me, yet I'll speak.”