“I do believe you think what now you speak, but what we do determine oft we break. Purpose is but the slave to memory, of violent birth, but poor validity, which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree, but fall, unshaken, when they mellow be. Most unnecessary 'tis that we forget to pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt. What to ourselves in passion we propose, the passion ending, doth the purpose lose. The violence of either grief or joy their own enactures with themselves destroy. Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament. Grief joys, joy grieves on slender accident. This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange that even our loves should with our fortunes change. For 'tis a question left us yet to prove, whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love. The great man down, you mark his favorite flies. The poor advanced makes friends of enemies. And hitherto doth love on fortune tend, for who not needs shall never lack a friend, and who in want a hollow friend doth try, directly seasons him his enemy. But, orderly to end where I begun, our wills and fates do so contrary run that our devices still are overthrown. Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own. So think thou wilt no second husband wed, but die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.”

“Our wills and fates do so contrary run, that our devices still are overthrown; our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.”

“ It is difficult to see ourselves as we are. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to have good friends, lovers or others who will do us the good service of telling us the truth about ourselves. When we don't, we can so easily delude ourselves, lose a sense of truth about ourselves, and our conscience loses power and purpose. Mostly, we tell ourselves what we would like to hear. We lose our way.”

“Love is too young to know what conscience is,  Yet who knows not conscience is born of love?  Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss,  Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove:  For, thou betraying me, I do betray  My nobler part to my gross body's treason;  My soul doth tell my body that he may  Triumph in love; flesh stays no farther reason,  But rising at thy name doth point out thee,  As his triumphant prize. Proud of this pride,  He is contented thy poor drudge to be,  To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side.    No want of conscience hold it that I call    Her 'love,' for whose dear love I rise and fall.”

“honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honour set a leg? No: or a arm? No: or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is honour? A word. What is that then? Air. A trim reckoning! - Who hath it? He that died o‘ Wednesday? Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ‘Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I‘ll have none of it: honour is a mere scutcheon: - and so ends my catechism.”

“Naught's had, all's spent,Where our desire is got without content.'Tis safer to be that which we destroyThan by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.”

“For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won,Than women's are. ...For women are as roses, whose fair flow'rBeing once display'd doth fall that very hour.Viola: And so they are; alas, that they are so!To die, even when they to perfection grow!”