“You are a lover. Borrow Cupid's wingsand soar with them above a common bound.”

“Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;For loan oft loses both itself and friend,And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.This above all: to thine own self be true,   85And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man.Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!”

“Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.”

“Cupid is a knavish lad,Thus to make poor mortals mad!”

“This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy, this Senior Junior, giant dwarf...Cupid.”

“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,Such shaping fantasies, that apprehendMore than cool reason ever comprehends.The lunatic, the lover and the poetAre of imagination all compact:One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;And as imagination bodies forthThe forms of things unknown, the poet's penTurns them to shapes and gives to airy nothingA local habitation and a name.”

“Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar; Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel, But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatched unfledged comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, Bear’t that th’opposèd may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man, And they in France of the best rank and station Are most select and generous, chief in that. Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”