“Passion lends them power, time means to meet, tempering extremities with extremes sweet.”

“Now old desire doth in his death-bed lie,And young affection gapes to be his heir;That fair for which love groan'd for and would die,With tender Juliet match'd, is now not fair.Now Romeo is beloved and loves again,Alike betwitched by the charm of looks,But to his foe supposed he must complain,And she steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks:Being held a foe, he may not have accessTo breathe such vows as lovers use to swear;And she as much in love, her means much lessTo meet her new-beloved any where:But passion lends them power, time means, to meetTempering extremities with extreme sweet.”

“O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!”

“Patience perforce with willful choler meeting/Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting./I will withdraw, but this intrusion shall,/Now seeming sweet, convert to bitt'rest gall.”

“I pray you, in your letters,When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speakOf one that loved not wisely but too well;Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,Perplexed in the extreme. . .”

“But love, first learnèd in a lady's eyes,Lives not alone immurèd in the brain,But, with the motion of all elements,Courses as swift as thought in every power,And gives to every power a double power,Above their functions and their offices.It adds a precious seeing to the eye;A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;A lover's ears will hear the lowest sound,When the suspicious head of theft is stopped:Love's feeling is more soft and sensibleThan are the tender horns of cockled snails:Love's tongue proves dainty Baccus gross in taste.For valour, is not love a Hercules,Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musicalAs bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;And when Love speaks, the voice of all the godsMakes heaven drowsy with the harmony.Never durst poet touch a pen to writeUntil his ink were tempered with Love's sighs.”

“By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods; since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage, but music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night and his affections dark as Erebus: Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.”