“Who knows himself a braggart, let him fear this, for it will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass.”

“God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man. In truth, I know it is a sin to be a mocker, but he! why, he hath a horse better than the Neapolitan’s, a better bad habit of frowning than the Count Palentine; he is every man in no man. If a throstle sing, he falls straight a-cap’ring. He will fence with his own shadow. If I should marry him, I should marry twenty husbands.”

“Dost thou not suspect my place? Dost thou not suspect my years? O that he were here to write me down an ass! But masters, remember that I am an ass. Though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass. No, thou villain, thou art full of piety, as shall be proved upon thee by good witness. I am a wise fellow, and which is more, an officer, and which is more, a householder, and which is more, as pretty a piece of flesh as any is in Messina, and one that knows the law, go to . . . and one that hath two gowns, and everything handsome about him. Bring him away. O that I had been writ down an ass!”

“He who the sword of heaven will bearShould be as holy as severe;Pattern in himself to know,Grace to stand, and virtue go;More nor less to others payingThan by self-offences weighing.Shame to him whose cruel strikingKills 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' stringsMost ponderous and substantial things!Craft against vice I must apply:With Angelo to-night shall lieHis old betrothed but despised;So disguise shall, by the disguised,Pay with falsehood false exacting,And perform an old contracting.”

“And Caesar's spirit, raging for revenge,With Ate by his side come hot from hell,Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war,That this foul deed shall smell above the earthWith carrion men, groaning for burial.”

“The most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is, to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company.”

“O, let us pay the time but needful woe,Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.This England never did, nor never shall,Lie at the proud foot of a conquerorBut when it first did help to wound itself.Now these her princes are come home again,Come the three corners of the world in arms,And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rueIf England to itself do rest but true.”