Polonius Quotes

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words. Lord Polonius: What is the matter, my lord? Hamlet: Between who? Lord Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

If we are true to ourselves, we can not be false to anyone.

Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel? Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed. Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel. Polonius: It is backed like a weasel. Hamlet: Or like a whale? Polonius: Very like a whale.

Where is Polonius? HAMLET In heaven. Send hither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i' th' other place yourself. But if indeed you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.

Maybe I got sick of accusations, sick of being Polonius's daughter, and Laertes's sister, and Hamlet's girlfriend. Maybe I wanted, for a short while, simply to be myself.

Where is Polonius? - In heaven; send hither to see: if your messenger find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself.

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. Hamlet could be told from Polonius's point of view and called The Tragedy of Polonius, Lord Chamberlain of Denmark. He didn't think he was a minor character in anything, I daresay.

Use them after your own honour and dignity; the less they deserve, the more merit in your bounty. - Hamlet to Polonius

Forgive me. I didn’t mean to kill you, Polonius. The blade slipped out of the sheath, and it struck you.

And that's another thing. What if I were to talk to Tanker, find out if he's happy at the Polonius Room, see if maybe he wants to come back? He was always such a key part of this kitchen." Rickey pointed a chocolate-smudged finger at Lenny. "Don't you dare. If I decide I want to talk to him, I'll talk to him. I told you, I don't need you handling my business for me." "I understand," Lenny said, making a mental note to call Tanker.

My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently. HAMLET Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? POLONIUS By th'mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed. HAMLET Methinks it is like a weasel. POLONIUS It is backed like a weasel. HAMLET Or like a whale? POLONIUS Very like a whale. HAMLET Then I will come to my mother by and by. - They fool me to the top of my bent. - I will come by and by.

we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table; that's the end. CLAUDIUS Alas, alas. HAMLET A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm. CLAUDIUS What dost thou mean by this? HAMLET Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

Be the best of anything you get into. If you want to be a whore, it's your life. Be a damn good one. Don't chippy at anything. Anything worth having is worth working for.' It was her version of Polonius' speech to Laertes. With that wisdom in my pouch, I was to go out and buy my future.

Lear, Macbeth. Mercutio – they live on their own as it were. The newspapers are full of them, if we were only the Shakespeares to see it. Have you ever been in a Police Court? Have you ever watched tradesmen behind their counters? My soul, the secrets walking in the streets! You jostle them at every corner. There's a Polonius in every first-class railway carriage, and as many Juliets as there are boarding-schools. ... How inexhaustibly rich everything is, if you only stick to life.

My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king. HAMLET The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing - GUILDENSTERN A thing my lord? HAMLET Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after!

Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius? HAMLET At supper. KING CLAUDIUS At supper! where? HAMLET Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots: your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table: that's the end.

I may doubt the truths of the world, but never again will I doubt whether or not the person that I am, or may be, is loved or worthy of love. I know myself, and I don’t. Both can be true. I am not Ophelia: daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes, lover of Hamlet. I am Ophelia Rojas: daughter of Miguel and Stella, best friend of Sammie and Agatha, aspirational lover to many, many boys and one girl. And I am so much more, just waiting to be discovered.

The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited. Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the liberty, these are the only men. Polonius

To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Polonius, you sometimes have to get your hands a little dirty to set things straight.

And these few precepts in thy memory Look thou character. 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 unto thy soul with hoops of steel, But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade.

Shakespeare’s Polonius said, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

such wanton, wild, and usual slips/ As are companions noted and most known/ To youth and liberty.

More grief to hide than hate to utter love. Polonius, Hamlet.

Words, words, words. Polonius

Polonius to Laertes (in Hamlet): “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man [or woman].

What did you enact? POLONIUS: I did enact Julius Caesar; I was kill'd i' the Capitol; Brutus killed me. HAMLET: It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.

Othello, Ophelia and Timon have not committed suicide. Iago, Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes and the society respectively drive them mad and ultimately murder them by using ‘words’ only!

Clement, usually a fluent speaker in any situation, could hear his voice assuming a pompous and affected tone, not unlike that which many actors use (wrongly in Clement's view) when playing Polonius.

What are you reading?" Polonius asked. "Words, words, words," said Hamlet. "And what's the subject?" "Lesser than the king, but still not nothing." It took Polonius a moment to realize he had answered another meaning of 'subject.' "I mean what do you read about?" "All in a line, back and forth." said Hamlet. "I go from left to right with my mind full, and then must drop it there and head back empty-headed to the left side again, and take up another load to carry forward. It's a most tedious job, and when I'm done, there are all the letters where I found them, unchanged despite my having carried them all into my head.

I read the miserable story of the play in which she was the one true loving soul. It obviously described the spread of an epidemic brain fever which, like typhoid, was perhaps caused by seepings from the palace graveyard into the Elsinore water supply. From an inconspicuous start among sentries on the battlements the infection spread through prince, king, prime minister and courtiers causing hallucinations, logomania and paranoia resulting in insane suspicions and murderous impulses. I imagined myself entering the palace quite early in the drama with all the executive powers of an efficient public health officer. The main carriers of the disease (Claudius, Polonius and the obviously incurable Hamlet) would he quarantined in separate wards. A fresh water supply and efficient modern plumbing would soon set the Danish state right and Ophelia, seeing this gruff Scottish doctor pointing her people toward a clean and healthy future, would be powerless to withhold her love.

No, he would never know his father, who would continue to sleep over there, his face for ever lost in the ashes. There was a mystery about that man, a mystery he had wanted to penetrate. But after all there was only the mystery of poverty that creates beings without names and without a past, that sends them into the vast throng of the nameless dead who made the world while they themselves were destroyed for ever. For it was just that that his father had in common with the men of the Labrador. The Mahon people of the Sahel, the Alsatians on the high plateaus, with this immense island between sand and sea, which the enormous silence was now beginning to envelop: the silence of anonymity; it enveloped blood and courage and work and instinct, it was at once cruel and compassionate. And he who had wanted to escape from the country without name, from the crowd and from a family without a name, but in whom something had gone on craving darkness and anonymity - he too was a member of the tribe, marching blindly into the night near the old doctor who was panting at his right, listening to the gusts of music coming from the square, seeing once more the hard inscrutable faces of the Arabs around the bandstands, Veillard's laughter and his stubborn face - also seeing with a sweetness and a sorrow that wrung his heart the deathly look on his mother's face at the time of the bombing - wandering though the night of the years in the land of oblivion where each one is the first man, where he had to bring himself up, without a father, having never known those moments when a father would call his son, after waiting for him to reach the age of listening, to tell him the family's secret, or a sorrow of long ago, or the experience of his life, those moments when even the ridiculous and hateful Polonius all of a sudden becomes great when he is speaking to Laertes; and he was sixteen, then he was twenty, and no one had spoken to him, and he had to learn by himself, to grow alone, in fortitude, in strength, find his own morality and truth, at last to be born as a man and then to be born in a harder childbirth, which consists of being born in relation to others, to women, like all the men born in this country who, one by one, try to learn without roots and without faith, and today all of them are threatened with eternal anonymity and the loss of the only consecrated traces of their passage on this earth, the illegible slabs in the cemetery that the night has now covered over; they had to learn how to live in relation to others, to the immense host of the conquerors, now dispossessed, who had preceded them on this land and in whom they now had to recognise the brotherhood of race and destiny.

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou cannot not then be false to any man. Farewell. My blessing season this in thee!

One speech in't I chiefly loved. T'was Aeneas' tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially when he speaks of Priam's slaughter. If it live in your memory, begin at this line

Gender is a natural necessity for living things. Show me a species that doesn't have gender roles and I'll show you a rock. But saying no to cultural Marxism can be punishable by impoverishment and even death.

Nå, Hamlet, var är Polonius? HAMLET På supé. KUNGEN På supé? Var då? HAMLET Inte där han spisar utan där han spisas. En hel konselj av intrigerande maskar håller på med honom. Masken är den som vinner till slut. Vi göder alla andra kreatur för att göda oss själva, och vi göder oss själva för maskarna. En fet kung och en mager tiggare är bara variationer på menyn - två rätter på samma bord. Det är slutet på visan.

For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour, Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, A violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, The perfume and suppliance of a minute, No more.

We enter upon a stage which we did not design and we find ourselves part of an action that was not of our making. Each of us being a main character in his own drama plays subordinate parts in the dramas of others, and each drama constrains the others. In my drama, perhaps, I am Hamlet or Iago or at least the swineherd who may yet become a prince, but to you I am only A Gentleman or at best Second Murderer, while you are my Polonius or my Gravedigger, but your own hero. Each of our dramas exerts constraints on each other’s, making the whole different from the parts, but still dramatic.

It’s all the more interesting, then, that Augustus understood so much of Sun Tzu while knowing nothing of him. The explanation may lie in a logic of strategy that undergirds cultures—much as grammar does languages—over vast stretches of time, space, and scale. If so, common sense, when confronting uncommon circumstances, may itself be another of the contradictions held simultaneously in the minds of first-rate intelligences. For the practice of principles must precede their derivation, articulation, and institutionalization. You may be looking at clouds, like Polonius, but you’ll need to have both feet firmly planted on the ground.

PLAYER 'But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen--' HAMLET 'The mobled queen?' LORD POLONIUS That's good; 'mobled queen' is good. PLAYER 'Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe, About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins, A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up; Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd, 'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have pronounced: But if the gods themselves did see her then When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs, The instant burst of clamour that she made, Unless things mortal move them not at all, Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, And passion in the gods.

give order that these bodies High on a stage by placed to the view. And let me speak to the unknowing world How these things came about. So shall you hear Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, Of accidental judgements, casual slaughters, Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, And, in this upshot, purposes mistook Fallen on th'inventors' heads. All this can I Truly deliver.

Player: usurped by his uncle and shattered by his mother's incestuous marriage ... loses his reason ... throwing the court into turmoil and disarray as he alternates between bitter melancholy and unrestricted lunacy ... staggering from the suicidal (a pose) to the homicidal (here he kills "POLONIUS"). ... he at last confronts his mother and in a scene of provocative ambiguity-(a somewhat oedipal embrace) begs her to repent and recant-- (He springs up, still talking.) The King-(he pushes forward the POISONER/KING) tormented by guilt-haunted by fear-decides to despatch his nephew to England-and entrusts this undertaking to two smiling accomplices-friends-courtiers-to two spies- (He has swung round to bring together the POISONER/KING and the two cloaked TRAGEDIANS; the latter kneel and accept a scroll from the KING.) -giving them a letter to present to the English court--!

Let me sum up: Hamlet’s the prince of Denmark. His dad, the king, died and though it’s only been two months, his mom married his dad’s brother, Claudius. Now Claudius is king. Hamlet thinks that’s whack.” “Sounds just like Shakespeare.” “One night, three guards see a ghost and they tell Ham. Ham sees it too. It’s Dad. Dad says Claudius poured poison in his ear and killed him. Hamlet’s mind is blown. But hold up, he’s been dating Ophelia, daughter of Polonius. Polonius is Claudius’ right-hand man. Polonius tells Ophelia that Hamlet’s losing his marbles and she has to break up with him. “Ophelia and Hamlet are in love but, like, the fucking patriarchy, right? She caves to her dad’s pressure and agrees to break up with him. Ham’s devastated and rants that all women are traitorous bitches, and Ophelia should go to a nunnery and never reproduce. Then Ham confronts his mom while Polonius eavesdrops and—whoops!—Ham kills Polonius. “Ophelia, having lost her man and her dad, proceeds to lose her mind. She goes nuts, sings a bunch of dirty, sexy-time songs, and drowns herself in the river. Then a bunch of other shit happens until pretty much everyone else in the cast is dead. Curtain.

Shakespeare had Polonius truly say, "The apparel oft proclaims the man." (Hamlet, act 1, sc. 3). We are affected by our own outward appearances; we tend to fill roles. If we are in our Sunday best, we have little inclination for roughhousing; if we dress for work, we are drawn to work; if we dress immodestly, we are tempted to act immodestly; if we dress like the opposite sex, we tend to lose our sexual identity or some of the characteristics that distinguish the eternal mission of our sex. Now I hope not to be misunderstood: I am not saying that we should judge one another by appearance, for that would be folly and worse; I am saying that there is a relationship between how we dress and groom ourselves and how we are inclined to feel and act. By seriously urging full conformity with the standards, we must not drive a wedge between brothers and sisters, for there are some who have not heard or do not understand. They are not to be rejected or condemned as evil, but rather loved the more, that we may patiently bring them to understand the danger to themselves and the disservice to the ideals to which they owe loyalty, if they depart from their commitments. We hope that the disregard we sometimes see is mere thoughtlessness and not deliberate. [Ensign, Mar. 1980, 2, 4]

Then, if he says he loves you, It fits your wisdom so far to believe it As he in his particular act and place May give his saying deed; which is no further Than the main voice of Denmark goes withal. Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain If with too credent ear you list his songs, Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open To his master importunity. Fear it, Ophelia, fear it, my dear sister. And keep you in the rear of your affection, Out of the shot and danger of desire. The chariest maid is prodigal enough If she unmask her beauty to the moon. Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes. The canker galls the infants of the spring Too oft before their buttons be disclosed; And in the morn and liquid dew of youth Contagious blastments are more imminent. Be wary then. Best safety lies in fear. Youth to itself rebels, though none else near.

In life,” he said, “there are no essentially major or minor characters. To that extent, all fiction and biography, and most historiography, are a lie. Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. Hamlet could be told from Polonius’s point of view and called The Tragedy of Polonius, Lord Chamberlain of Denmark. He didn’t think he was a minor character in anything, I daresay. Or suppose you’re an usher in a wedding. From the groom’s viewpoint he’s the major character; the others play supporting parts, even the bride. From your viewpoint, though, the wedding is a minor episode in the very interesting history of your life, and the bridge and groom both are minor figures. What you’ve done is choose to play the part of a minor character: it can be pleasant for you to pretend to be less important you know you are, as Odysseus does when he disguises as a swineherd. And every member of the congregation at the wedding sees himself as the major character, condescending to witness the spectacle. So in this sense fiction isn’t a lie at all, but a true representation of the distortion that everyone makes of life. “Now, not only are we the heroes of our own life stories–we’re the ones who conceive the story, and give other people the essences of minor characters. But since no man’s life story as a rule is ever one story with a coherent plot, we’re always reconceiving just the sort of hero we are, and consequently just the sort of minor roles that other people are supposed to play. This is generally true. If any man displays almost the same character day in and day out, all day long, it’s either because he has no imagination, like an actor who can play only one role, or because he has an imagination so comprehensive that he sees each particular situation of his life as an episode in some grand over-all plot, and can so distort the situations that the same type of hero can deal with them all. But this is most unusual. “This kind of role-assigning is myth-making, and when it’s done consciously or unconsciously for the purpose of aggrandizing or protecting your ego–and it’s probably done for this purpose all the time–it becomes Mythotherapy. Here’s the point: an immobility such as you experienced that time in Penn Station is possible only to a person who for some reason or other has ceased to participate in Mythotherapy. At that time on the bench you were neither a major nor a minor character: you were no character at all. It’s because this has happened once that it’s necessary for me to explain to you something that comes quite naturally to everyone else. It’s like teaching a paralytic how to walk again.

Prête l'oreille à tous, mais tes paroles au petit nombre. Prends l'opinion de chacun ; mais réserve ton jugement. (Polonius, Acte I, Scène III)

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” whatever else it might be, seems to be an investigation into the possibility of durational being, which Bergson had described as “the form which the succession of our conscious states assumes when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from its former states.” The succession that Bergson opposes to vitality is the realm in which the morbid Prufrock tries to imagine speaking Andrew Marvell’s line, “Now let us sport us while we may,” but then falls back on his indecision, his failure to pose his overwhelming question, and his inability to sing his love. Prufrock’s problems are shown to be symptoms of the form of time in which desire for youth runs defiantly against the remorselessness of aging, snapping the present in two. The “silent seas” that might bring relief from currents and countercurrents of time turn out to be like the troubling one that figures in Hamlet’s overwhelming question: “To be or not to be: that is the question: / Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles / And by opposing end them.” Prufrock understands but is unable to admit the ontological force of the question: the “whips and scorns of time” that threaten to reverse all his “decisions and revisions” make him wish to be merely “a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.” That synecdochic figure is as much an anachronous peripeteia for Prufrock as it is for Polonius when Hamlet taunts him: “you yourself, sir, should be as old as I am if, like a crab, you could go backwards.

Therefore since brevity is the soul of wit and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief: – your son is mad. Polonius in Hamlet II.ii.

Haldeman, it seemed, lived by Polonius’ advice to his son—“apparel oft proclaims the man.

Their father, Polonius, was in a ‘have a go’ mood and joined in. He also made changes, and together they renamed it: The Tragedy of the Very Witty and Not Remotely Boring Polonius, Father of the Noble Laertes, Who Avenges His Fair Sister, Ophelia, Driven Mad by the Callous, Murderous and Outrageously Disrespectful Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.” “What was it like?” “With Polonius? Very . . . wordy.

Hay algo sórdido en los hombres que quieren esconder la calvicie con algo tan poco discreto como un peluquín o un trasplante. Es como si ellos mismos decidieran confesarle al mundo que son unos falsos. Especialmente cuando han pasado una edad donde la vanidad no es perdonable. Porque coñazo, ya usted ha vivido más de seis décadas en este planeta, ¿no es tiempo suficiente para abandonar la superficialidad, para dejar de ser un maldito leve? Ladies and Gentlemen, el Profesor Polonius.

What is the matter, my lord? Hamlet: Between who? Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord. Hamlet: Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams; all which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for yourself, sir, shall grow old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward. Polonius: [Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method in't Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 193–206

He [Hamlet] sees ghosts and listens to dreams. And when his ghost father tells him that he (Hamlet Senior) was killed by his brother and asks Hamlet Junior to avenge his death, in the right, honorable way, Hamlet says yes, yes, yes, he'll do it. But somehow he never gets round to it. Not like the other two young men in the play. The Norwegian Prince Fortinbras(...) has made his life [!!] pursuing the honor that his father lost when Hamlet Senior beat him in single combat. (...). When the lord chamberlain,Polonius, is killed, his son, Laertes, returns to the court immediately, demanding restitution, (...). So there is no shortage of examples of how young men are expected to and do act in this world where honor demands an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. But Hamlet doesn't do it. Instead, he beats up on his girlfriend and he's cruel to his mother.

Since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I shall be brief. Your noble son is mad . . . [Polonius in Hamlet]

Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. Your noble son is mad . . .

It is essentially self-centered. It is the erotic manifestation of the creed of Polonius, which had exerted such a disastrous influence on my own life: “This above all: To thine own self be true.” It is a love that sacrifices the lover on the altar of self-worship and self-gratification. The love that is happy to break hearts and kill babies. It is, like all other manifestations of pride, an act of self-deification. In contrast to this false worldly love, true love is inseparable from self-sacrifice.

Ophélia. Le second prendra tous les ridicules, toutes les infirmités, toutes les laideurs. Dans ce partage de l’humanité et de la création, c’est à lui que reviendront les passions, les vices, les crimes ; c’est lui qui sera luxurieux, rampant, gourmand, avare, perfide, brouillon, hypocrite ; c’est lui qui sera tour à tour Iago, Tartufe, Basile ; Polonius, Harpagon, Bartholo ; Falstaff, Scapin, Figaro. Le beau n’a qu’un type ; le laid en a mille.

Anybody remember Shakespeare from tenth grade? “Be true to yourself” is a quote from his play Hamlet. The original version was “This above all: to thine own self be true.”21 Anybody remember who said that line? If not, don’t feel bad; I had to look it up. It was Polonius, the fool.

Finally, when we recall that in those days a court jester would often assume the name of his master, with only a slight change in the ending, the picture becomes complete. We have thus the interesting figure of this Italian or Italianate jester haunting the halls of a Northern castle, a man in his forties, but as alert as he was in his youth twenty years ago when he replaced Yorick. Whereas Polonius had been the father of good news, Claudio is the uncle of bad news.

Shakespeare’s pen was dipped in courtly scandals and his audience titteringly aware of who it was being pulled apart onstage. Nobody was safe from his satirical barbs, not Elizabeth’s hunchbacked secretary of state Robert Cecil, whose deformities were likely parodied in Richard III; not the powerful Lord Burghley, ruthlessly mocked in Hamlet as the Alzheimered Polonius; and not even the queen herself, who once snappishly complained of having been roasted in Richard II.

realize the importance of the words of Polonius, “To thine own self be true.” For without personal power, life is a frightening, painful experience.

The academic auspices under which we meet this afternoon, prompt me to introduce my remarks with a literary reference. I recall for you a few lines of Shakespeare, from Hamlet where Polonius bids farewell to his son Laertes: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be, For loan oft loses both itself and friend And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry." This was undoubtedly necessary advice from a father to a son about to leave for France. but it is clear that Polonius was neither a banker nor a Californian. If he had been a banker, he might have commented on the merits of good collateral as compared to the possible loss of a few friends. And if he had been a Californian, caught in the vigor of a growth economy, the idea of not being a borrower would never have occurred to him. Therefore, it should not be surprising that a California banker has come to say something on behalf of debt.

When we are called upon to do things that we find hateful and stupid, we are simultaneously forced to act contrary to the structure of values motivating us to move forward stalwartly and protecting us from dissolution into confusion and terror. “To thine own self be true,”1 as Polonius has it, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. That “self”—that integrated psyche—is in truth the ark that shelters us when the storms gather and the water rises. To act in violation of its precepts—its fundamental beliefs—is to run our own ship onto the shoals of destruction. To act in violation of the precepts of that fundamental self is to cheat in the game we play with ourselves, to suffer the emptiness of betrayal, and to perceive abstractly and then experience in embodied form the loss that is inevitably to come.

If there is a reason that explains the success of all the greats,” said the Spanish master Arturo De Ascanio, channeling Polonius, “it is that they have learned to know themselves and have thus been able to exploit and take advantage of their own personality.