“There's a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads onto fortune, omitted, all their voyages end in shallows and miseries. Upon such tide are we now...”

“There is a tide in the affairs of menWhich, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;Omitted, all the voyage of their lifeIs bound in shallows and in miseries.On such a full sea are we now afloat;And we must take the current when it serves,Or lose our ventures.”

“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.”

“Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a specialprovidence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will benow; if it be not now, yet it will come: thereadiness is all.”

“There's no trust, No faith, no honesty in men; all perjured, All forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.”

“The merciless Macdonald(Worthy to be a rebel, — for, to that,The multiplying villainies of natureDo swarm upon him) from the Western IslesOf kerns and gallowglasses is supplied;And Fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,Showed like a rebel's whore: but all's too weak:For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name)Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish'd steel,Which smoked with bloody execution,Like valour's minion,Carv'd out his passage.”

“Where we are, There's daggers in men's smiles: the near in blood, The nearer bloody.”