Measure For Measure Shakespeare Quotes

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?

Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

Life... is a paradise to what we fear of death.

It is excellent To have a giant's strength But it is tyrannous To use it like a giant

Your cause of sorrow must not be measured by his worth, for then it hath no end.

But man, proud man, Dress'd in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd— His glassy essence—like an angry ape Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens, Would all themselves laugh mortal.

Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all! Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall: Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none: And some condemned for a fault alone.

O, it is excellent To have a giant's strenght, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.

What's his offense? Groping for trout in a peculiar river.

I, measuring his affections by my own, Which then most sought where most might not be found, Being one too many by my weary self, Pursued my humor not pursuing his, And gladly shunned who gladly fled from me.

Thou hast nor youth nor age But as it were an after dinner sleep Dreaming of both.

Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear, Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear. So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows. The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand, And, touching hers, make blessèd my rude hand. Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

Thy best of rest is sleep, And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st Thy death, which is no more.

To sue to live, I find I seek to die; And, seeking death, find life.

It seems only fair," Matthew continued. "A bit of karma, if you will." He twirled the stake again. "Shall we see how long you scream?" "Are you ever going to shut up?" I snapped, fear and irritation filling me in equal measures. "This isn't your monologue, Hamlet. It's the battle scene, in case you've forgotten." His eyes narrowed so fast they nearly sparked. They were the color of honey on fire. One of the others growled like an animal, low in his throat. It made all the hairs on my arms stand straight up. I was going to die for making fun of Shakespeare. My English Lit professor would be so proud.

I'll be supposed upon a book, his face is the worst thing about him.

Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, Another thing to fall." - Angelo, Act 2 Scene 1

There is no measure in the occasion that breeds; therefore the sadness is without limit.

And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.

Wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty like a Scotch jig--and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance and with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.

Music oft hath such a charm To make bad good, and good provoke to harm.

Life is better life past fearing death, Than that which lives to fear.

There's some ill planet reigns: I must be patient till the heavens look With an aspect more favourable. Good my lords, I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Commonly are; the want of which vain dew Perchance shall dry your pities: but I have That honourable grief lodged here which burns Worse than tears drown: beseech you all, my lords, With thoughts so qualified as your charities Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so The king's will be perform'd!

From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty As surfeit is the father of much fast, So every scope of the immoderate use Turns to restraint. Our natures do pursue, - Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, - A thirsty evil; and when we drink we die.

This is the way history happens: it is measured out in days rather than epochs.

Ah, Juliet, if the measure of thy joy Be heaped like mine, and that thy skill be more To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath This neighbours air, and let rich music’s tongue Unfold the imagined happiness that both Receive in either by this dear encounter.

That in the captain's but a choleric word, Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride, and hug it in mine arms.

Alack, when once our grace we have forgot, Nothing goes right; we would and we would not.

It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then another, loving our way back to life... Maybe being perfectly happy is not really the point. Maybe that is only some modern American dream of the point, while the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel in our lives, time and again, "twixt two extremes of passion--joy and grief," as Shakespeare put it. However much I've lost, what remains to me is that I can still speak to name the things I love. And I can look for safety in giving myself away to the world's least losable things.

When we set about accounting for a Napoleon or a Shakespeare or a Raphael or a Wagner or an Edison or other extraordinary person, we understand that the measure of his talent will not explain the whole result, nor even the largest part of it; no, it is the atmosphere in which the talent was cradled that explains; it is the training it received while it grew, the nurture it got from reading, study, example, the encouragement it gathered from self-recognition and recognition from the outside at each stage of its development: when we know all these details, then we know why the man was ready when his opportunity came.

What one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men. For that reason a disobedience committed in a garden contaminates the human race; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew suffices to safe it. Perhaps Schopenhauer is right: I am all others, any men is all men, Shakespeare is in some way the wretched John Vincent Moon.

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

Let me hear you speak farther. I have spirit to do anything that appears not foul in the truth of my spirit.

I had as lief have the foppery of freedom as the morality of imprisonment.

There is a terrible truthfulness about photography. The ordinary academician gets hold of a pretty model, paints her as well as he can, calls her Juliet, and puts a nice verse Shakespeare underneath, and the picture is admired beyond measure. The photographer finds the same pretty girl, he dresses her up and photographs her, and calls her Juliet, but somehow it is no good – it is still Miss Wilkins, the model. It is too true to be Juliet. George Bernard Shaw Wilson’s Photographic Magazine, LVI, 1909

O, she tore the letter into a thousand half-pence; railed at herself, that she should be so immodest to write to one that she knew would flout her. 'I measure him,' says she, 'by my own spirit; for I should flout him, if he writ to me; yea, though I love him, I should.

من الناس من ترفعه الخطيئة ومنهم من تهوي به الفضيلة ، ومنهم من يفلت من غوائل الآثام ولا يحاسب عليها ، ومنهم من يؤخذ بصغيرة واحدة.

and let the devil Be sometime honour’d for his burning throne!

When vice makes mercy, mercy's so extended That for the fault's love is the' offender friended

Merely, thou art death's fool, For him thou labor'st by thy flight to shun, And yet run'st toward him still.

What's yet in this That bears the name of life? Yet in this life Lie hid moe thousand deaths; yet death we fear, That makes these odds all even.

The ultimate measure of love is not when both like each other Its when one ignores but the other continues to love till the end.

Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.

Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers for leisure; like doth quit like, and measure still for measure.

Shakespeare wrote sculduddery because he liked it, and for no other reason; his sensuality is the measure of his vitality.

Thou fond mad man, hear me but speak a word. ROMEO: O, thou wilt speak again of banishment. FRIAR LAURENCE: I’ll give thee armour to keep off that word: Adversity’s sweet milk, philosophy, To comfort thee, though thou art banished. ROMEO: Yet “banished”? Hang up philosophy! Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, Displant a town, reverse a prince’s doom, It helps not, it prevails not: talk no more. FRIAR LAURENCE: O, then I see that madmen have no ears. ROMEO: How should they, when that wise men have no eyes? FRIAR LAURENCE: Let me dispute with thee of thy estate. ROMEO: Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel: Wert thou as young as I, Juliet thy love, An hour but married, Tybalt murdered, Doting like me and like me banished, Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair, And fall upon the ground, as I do now, Taking the measure of an unmade grave.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thought Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible! The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury and imprisonment Can lay on nature is a paradise To what we fear of death.

Take a bar of metal and put a single notch in it. The two lengths thus defined have a relationship that can be expressed as the ratio between them. In theory, therefore, any rational number can be expressed with a single mark on a bar of metal. Using a simple alphabetic code, a mark that calculated to a ratio of .1215225 could be read as 12-15-22-5, or “l-o-v-e.” The complete plays of Shakespeare could be written in a single mark, if it were possible to measure accurately enough.

Nearly every aspect of life was subject to some measure of legal restraint. At a local level, you could be fined for letting your ducks wander in the road, for misappropriating town gravel, for having a guest in your house without a permit from the local bailiff.

For this new-married man approaching here, Whose salt imagination yet hath wrong'd Your well defended honour, you must pardon For Mariana's sake: but as he adjudged your brother,-- Being criminal, in double violation Of sacred chastity and of promise-breach Thereon dependent, for your brother's life,-- The very mercy of the law cries out Most audible, even from his proper tongue, 'An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!' Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; Like doth quit like, and MEASURE still FOR MEASURE

Wonder of time,' quoth she, 'this is my spite, That, thou being dead, the day should yet be light. 'Since thou art dead, lo, here I prophesy: Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend: It shall be waited on with jealousy, Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end, Ne'er settled equally, but high or low, That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe. 'It shall be fickle, false and full of fraud, Bud and be blasted in a breathing-while; The bottom poison, and the top o'erstraw'd With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile: The strongest body shall it make most weak, Strike the wise dumb and teach the fool to speak. 'It shall be sparing and too full of riot, Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures; The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet, Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures; It shall be raging-mad and silly-mild, Make the young old, the old become a child. 'It shall suspect where is no cause of fear; It shall not fear where it should most mistrust; It shall be merciful and too severe, And most deceiving when it seems most just; Perverse it shall be where it shows most toward, Put fear to valour, courage to the coward. 'It shall be cause of war and dire events, And set dissension 'twixt the son and sire; Subject and servile to all discontents, As dry combustious matter is to fire: Sith in his prime Death doth my love destroy, They that love best their loves shall not enjoy.

الفدية الشائنة والعفو الكريم أمران مختلفان ، ذلك أن الرحمة المشروعة لا تمت بسبب إلى الفداء المدنس.

إيه أيتها الأفواه الموكلة بالبلاء تنطوين على لسان ، لسان واحد يقضي بالإدانة ويقضي بالبراءة ، ويجعل القانون مطية لإرادته ويعلق الحق والباطل بالشهوات تسيرهما كيفما شاءت!

العجلة دائما تهب عجلة،والريث يهب ريثا،والشئ بمثله.والدقة على الدوام بدقة.

Let me be ignorant and in nothing good, But graciously to know I am no better.

Be absolute with death. Either death or life Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep.

Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.

So sorrow's heaviness doth heavier grow For debt that bankrout sleep doth sorrow owe, Which now in some slight measure it will pay, If for his tender here I make some stay

O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.

Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win

So, bring us to our palace, where we’ll show What’s yet behind, that’s meet you all should know.

O mighty Caesar! dost thou lie so low? Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, Shrunk to this little measure?

How he comes o'er us with our wilder days, Not measuring what use we made of them.

Come hither, Goodman Baldpate.

Truth is truth to th’end of reck’ning.

Shakespeare wrote sculduddery because he liked it, and for no other reason; his sensuality is the measure of his vitality.

Embora sejam bons, não me agradam o aplauso estrepitoso e os veementes gritos de "Salve", e penso que não têm muito discernimento os que se prestam a demonstrações dessa natureza.

For if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike As if we had them not.

Ignomy in ransom and free pardon Are of two houses; lawful mercy Is nothing kin to foul redemption.

My false o'erweighs your true.

Then he is dead? Ross: Ay, and brought off the field: your cause of sorrow Must not be measured by the worth, for then It hath no end.

The power of attaching an interest to the most trifling or painful pursuits, in which our whole attention and faculties are engaged, is one of the greatest happinesses of our nature. The common soldier mounts the breach with joy; the miser deliberately starves himself to death; the mathematician sets about extracting the cube-root with a feeling of enthusiasm; and the lawyer sheds tears of admiration over "Coke upon Littleton." It is the same through life. He who is not in some measure a pedant, though he maybe wise, cannot be a very happy man.

مامن قوي أو عظيم في هذه الدنيا يسلم من ألسنة الناس . فإن الغيبة تطعن من الخلف أنقى الفضائل وأطهرها . وأي ملك مهما أوتي من سلطان يستطيع أن ينتزع سموم الحقد من ألسنة العيابين المغتابين ؟

هذا هو العفو عنه،وكان ثمنه معصية اقترفها صاحب العفو نفسه.وهكذا تنتشر الجريمة بسرعة إذا ارتكبها صاحب السلطان.وإذا صدرت الرحمة عن الرذيلة،فاضت هذه الرحمة حتى ليصادق الناس المجرم من أجل الجريمة.

أبعدي بالله عني هاتين الشفتين،أبعديهما فما أعذبهما من ناكرتين للعهود والمواثيق،وهاتين العينين تسطعان كفلق الصبح فتضلان بأنوارهما ضوء النهار.ولكن ردي إلي قبلاتي،ردي إلي قبلاتي،فقد ضاعت عهود الحب وولت كأنما لم يكن لها وجود.

Between birth and death, neighbour, there is no business that is not risky; drinking water in a sitting position included! . . The gist of the matter is to do everything with fine tuning as an acrobat does when walking a tight rope, like a carpenter measuring everything meticulously!

إن الذي يحمل سيف السماء يجب أن تكون طهارته في مثل صرامته وأن يجعل نفسه مثالا للناس حتى يعلم كيف يجب أن تكون الرحمة،وأي طريق يجب أن تسلكه الفضيلة.وأن يحاسب الناس على ذنوبهم بمثل ما يحاسب به نفسه على ذنوبه بلا زيادة أو نقصان.ولبئس الرجل يجور في حكمه جورا فيقتل الناس بذنوب يطيب له أن يتردى فيها !

Alas, alas. Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once, And He that might the vantage best have took Found out the remedy. How would you be If He, which is the top of judgment, should But judge you as you are? Oh, think on that, And mercy then will breathe within your lips Like man new mad.

Who will believe thee, Isabel? My unsoiled name, the austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my place i' the state Will so your accusation overweigh That you shall stifle in your own report And smell of calumny. I have begun; And now I give my sensual race the rein. Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite...

Marry, if you would put me to verses or to dance for your sake, Kate, why you undid me: for the one, I have neither words nor measure, and for the other, I have no strength in measure, yet a reasonable measure in strength. If I could win a lady at leap-frog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my armour on my back, under the correction of bragging be it spoken. I should quickly leap into a wife. Or if I might buffet for my love, or bound my horse for her favours, I could lay on like a butcher and sit like a jack-an-apes, never off. But, before God, Kate, I cannot look greenly nor gasp out my eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation; only downright oaths, which I never use till urged, nor never break for urging. If thou canst love a fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sun-burning, that never looks in his glass for love of any thing he sees there, let thine eye be thy cook. I speak to thee plain soldier: If thou canst love me for this, take me: if not, to say to thee that I shall die, is true; but for thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love thee too. And while thou livest, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and uncoined constancy; for he perforce must do thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other places: for these fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies’ favours, they do always reason themselves out again. What! a speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a black beard will turn white; a curled pate will grow bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax hollow: but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly. If thou would have such a one, take me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier, take a king. And what sayest thou then to my love? speak, my fair, and fairly, I pray thee.

From thee, even from thy virtue! What's this, what's this? Is this her fault or mine? The tempter or the tempted, who sins most? Ha! Not she: nor doth she tempt: but it is I That, lying by the violet in the sun, Do as the carrion does, not as the flower, Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be That modesty may more betray our sense Than woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough, Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary And pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie! What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo? Dost thou desire her foully for those things That make her good? O, let her brother live! Thieves for their robbery have authority When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her, That I desire to hear her speak again, And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on? O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint, With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous Is that temptation that doth goad us on To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet, With all her double vigour, art and nature, Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid Subdues me quite. Even till now, When men were fond, I smiled and wonder'd how.

By the Lord, Horatio, these three years I have taken note of it; the age has grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe.” There can easily be too much liberty, according to Shakespeare — “too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty” (Measure for Measure, Act 1, Sc. 3), but the idea of too much authority is foreign to him. Claudio, himself under arrest, sings its praises: “Thus can the demi-god, Authority, Make us pay down for our offense by weight, — The words of Heaven; — on whom it will, it will; On whom it will not, so; yet still ’tis just.

Some glory in their birth, some in their skill, Some in their wealth, some in their bodies' force, Some in their garments though new-fangled ill; Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse; And every humour hath his adjunct pleasure, Wherein it finds a joy above the rest: But these particulars are not my measure, All these I better in one general best. Thy love is better than high birth to me, Richer than wealth, prouder than garments' cost, Of more delight than hawks and horses be; And having thee, of all men's pride I boast: Wretched in this alone, that thou mayst take All this away, and me most wretched make.

How heavy do I journey on the way,   When what I seek, my weary travel's end,   Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,   'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!'   The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,   Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,   As if by some instinct the wretch did know   His rider lov'd not speed, being made from thee:   The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,   That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,   Which heavily he answers with a groan,   More sharp to me than spurring to his side;     For that same groan doth put this in my mind,     My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.

Tybalt is dead, and Romeo — banished." That "banished," that one word "banished," Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt's death Was woe enough, if it had ended there; Or, if sour woe delights in fellowship And needly will be ranked with other griefs, Why followed not, when she said "Tybalt's dead," Thy father, or thy mother, nay, or both, Which modern lamentation might have moved? But with a rearward following Tybalt's death, "Romeo is banished" — to speak that word Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet, All slain, all dead. "Romeo is banished" — There is no end, no limit, measure, bound, In that word's death; no words can that woe sound.

Tybalt is dead, and Romeo — banished." That "banished," that one word "banished," Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts. Tybalt's death Was woe enough, if it had ended there; Or, if sour woe delights in fellowship And needly will be ranked with other griefs, Why followed not, when she said "Tybalt's dead," Thy father, or thy father, nay, or both, Which modern lamentation might have moved? But with a rearward following Tybalt's death, "Romeo is banished" — to speak that word Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet, All slain, all dead. "Romeo is banished" — There is no end, no limit, measure, bound, In that word's death; no words can that woe sound.

It is not to his own age, but to those following, and especially to our own time, that we are to look for the shaping and enormous influence upon human life of the genius of this poet. And it is measured not by the libraries of comments that his works have called forth, but by the prevalence of the language and thought of his poetry in all subsequent literature, and by its entrance into the current of common thought and speech. It may be safely said that the English-speaking world and almost every individual of it are different from what they would have been if Shakespeare had never lived. Of all the forces that have survived out of his creative time, he is one of the chief.

This work stands entirely on its own. Let us leave the poets aside: absolutely nothing has ever been achieved, perhaps, from a comparable surfeit of strength. My concept of the 'Dionysian' became the highest deed here; measured against it, all the rest of human action appears poor and limited. The fact that a Goethe, a Shakespeare would not be able to breathe a moment in this immense passion and height, that Dante, compared with Zarathustra, is just one of the faithful and not one who first creates the truth — a world-governing spirit, a destiny — that the poets of the Veda are priests and not even worthy of unfastening a Zarathustra's shoe-latches, this is all the very least that can be said.

Communities that prematurely close down questions produce reactionary questioners. A faith that is not oriented toward understanding is a faith in name only. And if a community shows no interest in understanding the revelation that it purports to follow, then its children will react accordingly. When communities are reduced to repeating clichés, those with eager intellects who are raised in those communities will want to ask questions but have no sense of questioning well. We know there is something vital missing. But reactions can quickly become overreactions, as when a teetotaler first takes up drink. Or like Shakespeare’s monkish Angelo in Measure for Measure, whose repressed sexual desires run rampant after years of being dormant. If people do not learn to question well, then they will almost certainly question badly.

The modern educational system provides numerous other examples of reality bowing down to written records. When measuring the width of my desk, the yardstick I am using matters little. My desk remains the same width regardless of whether I say it is 200 centimetres or 78.74 inches. However, when bureaucracies measure people, the yardsticks they choose make all the difference. When schools began assessing people according to precise marks, the lives of millions of students and teachers changed dramatically. Marks are a relatively new invention. Hunter-gatherers were never marked for their achievements, and even thousands of years after the Agricultural Revolution, few educational establishments used precise marks. A medieval apprentice cobbler did not receive at the end of the year a piece of paper saying he has got an A on shoelaces but a C minus on buckles. An undergraduate in Shakespeare’s day left Oxford with one of only two possible results – with a degree, or without one. Nobody thought of giving one student a final mark of 74 and another student 88.6

Simonton finds that on average, creative geniuses weren’t qualitatively better in their fields than their peers. They simply produced a greater volume of work, which gave them more variation and a higher chance of originality. “The odds of producing an influential or successful idea,” Simonton notes, are “a positive function of the total number of ideas generated.” Consider Shakespeare: we’re most familiar with a small number of his classics, forgetting that in the span of two decades, he produced 37 plays and 154 sonnets. Simonton tracked the popularity of Shakespeare’s plays, measuring how often they’re performed and how widely they’re praised by experts and critics. In the same five-year window that Shakespeare produced three of his five most popular works—Macbeth, King Lear, and Othello—he also churned out the comparatively average Timon of Athens and All’s Well That Ends Well, both of which rank among the worst of his plays and have been consistently slammed for unpolished prose and incomplete plot and character development. In every field, even the most eminent creators typically produce a large quantity of work that’s technically sound but considered unremarkable by experts and audiences. When the London Philharmonic Orchestra chose the 50 greatest pieces of classical music, the list included six pieces by Mozart, five by Beethoven, and three by Bach. To generate a handful of masterworks, Mozart composed more than 600 pieces before his death at thirty-five, Beethoven produced 650 in his lifetime, and Bach wrote over a thousand. In a study of over 15,000 classical music compositions, the more pieces a composer produced in a given five-year window, the greater the spike in the odds of a hit. Picasso’s oeuvre includes more than 1,800 paintings, 1,200 sculptures, 2,800 ceramics, and 12,000 drawings, not to mention prints, rugs, and tapestries—only a fraction of which have garnered acclaim. In poetry, when we recite Maya Angelou’s classic poem “Still I Rise,” we tend to forget that she wrote 165 others; we remember her moving memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and pay less attention to her other 6 autobiographies. In science, Einstein wrote papers on general and special relativity that transformed physics, but many of his 248 publications had minimal impact. If you want to be original, “the most important possible thing you could do,” says Ira Glass, the producer of This American Life and the podcast Serial, “is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.” Across fields, Simonton reports that the most prolific people not only have the highest originality; they also generate their most original output during the periods in which they produce the largest volume.* Between the ages of thirty and thirty-five, Edison pioneered the lightbulb, the phonograph, and the carbon telephone. But during that period, he filed well over one hundred patents for other inventions as diverse as stencil pens, a fruit preservation technique, and a way of using magnets to mine iron ore—and designed a creepy talking doll. “Those periods in which the most minor products appear tend to be the same periods in which the most major works appear,” Simonton notes. Edison’s “1,093 patents notwithstanding, the number of truly superlative creative achievements can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Raciocinai assim com a vida: Se te perco, perco uma coisa que somente os loucos querem conservar. Não passas de um sopro, exposto a todas as influências do ar e que, hora após hora, deterioram esta habitação em que moras. És meramente o joquete da morte, pois procuras sempre evitá-la pela fuga e, apesar disto, corres sempre em direção a ela. Não és nobre, porque todas as voluptuosidades, que são teu patrimônio, são acalentadas pelas baixezas. Estás longe de ser valente, pois temes o aguilhão terno e brando de um verme. O que tens de melhor em ti é o sono e que tantas vezes provocas; entretanto, temes grosseiramente a morte que não passa de um sono. Tu não és tu mesmo, pois tua existência é o resultado de milhares de grãos que saem do pó. Não és feliz, porque o que tu não tens, tu te esforças para adquirir e o que possuis, tu esqueces. Não és constante, pois tua natureza, segundo as fases da Lua, sofre estranhas alterações. Se és rico, és pobre; pois, semelhante a um asno cujo lombo está vergado ao peso de lingotes, só carregas as tuas riquezas um único dia e a morte te livra delas. Não tens amigos, pois o fruto de tuas próprias entranhas que te chama de ''pai'', o mais puro de teu sangue saído de teus próprios rins, maldiz a gota, a lepra e o catarro, que não te acabam bem depressa. Não tens juventude nem velhice, e, por assim dizer, não passas de um sesta depois do jantar que sonha um pouco com as duas idades; pois toda tua feliz juventude é passada fazendo-se velha e solicitando esmolas da paralítica velhice. Quando, no fim, fores velho e rico, já não terás calor, sentimento, força, nem beleza, para tornares agradáveis tuas riquezas. Que te sobra ainda nisto que traz o nome de Vida? Outras mil formas de morte ainda estão ocultas nesta vida e, contudo tememos a morte que nivela todas estas misérias.

The modern educational system provides numerous other examples of reality bowing down to written records. When measuring the width of my desk, the yardstick I am using matters little. My desk remains the same width regardless of whether I say it is 200 centimetres or 78.74 inches. However, when bureaucracies measure people, the yardsticks they choose make all the difference. When schools began assessing people according to precise marks, the lives of millions of students and teachers changed dramatically. Marks are a relatively new invention. Hunter-gatherers were never marked for their achievements, and even thousands of years after the Agricultural Revolution, few educational establishments used precise marks. A medieval apprentice cobbler did not receive at the end of the year a piece of paper saying he has got an A on shoelaces but a C minus on buckles. An undergraduate in Shakespeare’s day left Oxford with one of only two possible results – with a degree, or without one. Nobody thought of giving one student a final mark of 74 and another student 88.6 Credit 1.24 24. A European map of Africa from the mid-nineteenth century. The Europeans knew very little about the African interior, which did not prevent them from dividing the continent and drawing its borders. Only the mass educational systems of the industrial age began using precise marks on a regular basis. Since both factories and government ministries became accustomed to thinking in the language of numbers, schools followed suit. They started to gauge the worth of each student according to his or her average mark, whereas the worth of each teacher and principal was judged according to the school’s overall average. Once bureaucrats adopted this yardstick, reality was transformed. Originally, schools were supposed to focus on enlightening and educating students, and marks were merely a means of measuring success. But naturally enough, schools soon began focusing on getting high marks. As every child, teacher and inspector knows, the skills required to get high marks in an exam are not the same as a true understanding of literature, biology or mathematics. Every child, teacher and inspector also knows that when forced to choose between the two, most schools will go for the marks.

Epigraph But man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he’s most assured, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven, As would make the angels weep. —William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Ha! little honour to be much believed, And most pernicious purpose! Seeming, seeming! I will proclaim thee, Angelo; look for't: Sign me a present pardon for my brother, Or with an outstretch'd throat I'll tell the world aloud What man thou art. ANGELO Who will believe thee, Isabel? My unsoil'd name, the austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my place i' the state, Will so your accusation overweigh, That you shall stifle in your own report And smell of calumny. I have begun, And now I give my sensual race the rein: Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite; Lay by all nicety and prolixious blushes, That banish what they sue for; redeem thy brother By yielding up thy body to my will; Or else he must not only die the death, But thy unkindness shall his death draw out To lingering sufferance. Answer me to-morrow, Or, by the affection that now guides me most, I'll prove a tyrant to him. As for you, Say what you can, my false o'erweighs your true. Exit ISABELLA To whom should I complain? Did I tell this, Who would believe me? O perilous mouths, That bear in them one and the self-same tongue, Either of condemnation or approof; Bidding the law make court'sy to their will: Hooking both right and wrong to the appetite, To follow as it draws! I'll to my brother: Though he hath fallen by prompture of the blood, Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour. That, had he twenty heads to tender down On twenty bloody blocks, he'ld yield them up, Before his sister should her body stoop To such abhorr'd pollution. Then, Isabel, live chaste, and, brother, die: More than our brother is our chastity. I'll tell him yet of Angelo's request, And fit his mind to death, for his soul's rest. Exit From Measure for Measure, Act II, Scene IV

Hold still, mine hands, be still, O fev'rish blood, if the mere thought of her doth move me so, how shall it be when I stand by her side? How when her lovely face doth meet mine eyes? How shall I do when my ears hear her voice, which is a sweeter music to my soul above all else in the galaxy could sound? The measure of my keen affection doth and exceed all measure, line, or boundary. And this affection, bred of memory, is but a shadow to what may come forth when her presence I shall stand last.

That we were all, as some would seem to be, From all our faults, as faults from seeming, free

Thoughts are no subjects, Intents but merely thoughts