Twelfth Night Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Twelfth Night. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! it had a dying fall: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound, That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more: 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before. O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou, That, notwithstanding thy capacity Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, Of what validity and pitch soe'er, But falls into abatement and low price, Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy That it alone is high fantastical.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. Your fate awaits you. Accept it in body and spirit. To get used to the life you'll most likely be leading soon, get rid of your low-class trappings.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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a young woman in love always looks like patience on a monument smiling at grief
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Do what you do. This Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's Eve, Twelfth Night, Valentine's Day, Mardi Gras, St. Paddy's Day, and every day henceforth. Just do what you do. Live out your life and your traditions on your own terms. If it offends others, so be it. That's their problem.
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Chris Rose
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I say, there is no darkness but ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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O time, thou must untangle this, not I. It is too hard a knot for me t'untie.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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How does he love me? With adoration, with fertile tears, With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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In nature there's no blemish but the mind; None can be called deformed but the unkind: Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil Are empty trunks, o'erflourished by the devil.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Well, God give them wisdom that have it; and those that are fools, let them use their talents.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Conceal me what I am, and be my aid for such disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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I have unclasp'd to thee the book even of my secret soul.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night (Modern Library Classics))
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My stars shine darkly over me
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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She never told her love, but let concealment, like a worm 'i th' bud, feed on her damask cheek. She pinned in thought; and, with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? We men may say more, swear more; but indeed our shows are more than will; for we still prove much in our vows but little in our love.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Alas, the frailty is to blame, not we For such as we are made of, such we be
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Good Madonna, why mournest thou? Good Fool, for my brother's death. I think his soul is in hell, Madonna. I know his soul is in heaven, Fool. The more fool, Madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Dost think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?" (Twelfth Night)
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William Shakespeare
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Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Will you stay no longer? nor will you not that I go with you? Sebastian: By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me; the malignancy of my fate might, perhaps, distemper yours; therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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But, indeed, words are very rascals, since bonds [vows] disgraced them." Viola: "Thy reason, man?" Feste: "Troth [Truthfully], sir, I can yield you none without words, and words are grown so false, I am loathe to prove reason with them.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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This fellow is wise enough to play the fool; And to do that well craves a kind of wit: He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons, and the time, And, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is a practise As full of labour as a wise man's art For folly that he wisely shows is fit; But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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For what says Quinapalus? Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Lady, you are the cruel'st she alive If you will lead these graces to the grave And leave the world no copy.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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I am indeed not her fool, but her corrupter of words. (Act III, sc. I, 37-38)
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Come away, come away, Death, And in sad cypress let me be laid; Fly away, fly away, breath, I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white stuck all with yew, O prepare it! My part of death no one so true did share it. Not a flower, not a flower sweet, On my black coffin let there be strewn: Not a friend, not a friend greet My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown. A thousand thousand sighs to save, lay me O where Sad true lover never find my grave, to weep there!
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William Shakespeare (TWELFTH NIGHT)
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What's a drunken man like, fool? Feste: Like a drowned man, a fool, and a madman: one draught above heat makes him a fool; the second mads him; and a third drowns him.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Where lies your text? Viola: In Orsino's bosom. Olivia: In his bosom! In what chapter of his bosom? Viola: To answer by the method, in the first of his heart.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Nothing that is so, is so.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Them that dally nicely with words may quickly make them wanton.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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I can hardly forbear hurling things at him.
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William Shakespeare
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Alas, sir, how fell you besides your five wits?" Malvolio: "Fool, there was never a man so notoriously abused. I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art." Feste: "But as well? Then you are mad indeed, if you be no better in you wits than a fool.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Fate, show thy force; ourselves we do not owe; what is decreed must be, and be this so.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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What relish is in this? How runs the stream? Or I am mad, or else this is a dream. Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep. If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Wild with laughter, Twelfth Night is nevertheless almost always on the edge of violence.
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Harold Bloom (Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human)
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Why, this is very midsummer madness.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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By innocence I swear, and by my youth, I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth. And that no woman has, nor never none Shall mistress be of it, save I alone. And so, adieu, good madam; never more Will I my master’s tears to you deplore.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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What kind o' man is he?" "Why, of mankind.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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I do I know not what, and fear to find Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind. Fate, show thy force. Ourselves we do not owe. What is decreed must be; and be this so.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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so full of shapes is fancy
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, or, What You Will)
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Good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Fear not, Cesario, take thy fortunes up. Be that thou know'st thou art and then thou art as great as that thou fear'st.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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He does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Fare thee well/ A fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Still so cruel?" "Still so constant, lord.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Let her hang me: he that is well hanged in this world needs to fear no colours.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Alas, that they are so! To die even when they to perfection grow!
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Or I am mad, or else this is a dream.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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The innocent are guilty, the guilty are beyond hope, everything’s on its head, it’s a Twelfth Night of late-capitalist contradiction…
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Thomas Pynchon (Bleeding Edge)
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But rather reason thus with reason fetter: Love sough is good but given unsought is better.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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How now? Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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great while ago the world began, Β  Β Β Β With hey-ho, the wind and the rain; Β  But that’s all one, our play is done, Β  Β Β Β And we’ll strive to please you every day.Β Β Β Β Β Exit
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness,/ Wherein the...enemy does much.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Cucullus non facit monachum; that’s as much to say, as I wear not motley in my brain.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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A murderer's guilt is easier to hide than feelings of love. Midday is like nighttime for loveβ€”that's how brightly passion shines.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night (The Modern Shakespeare: The Original Play with a Modern Translation))
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I pity you That's a degree to love
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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I can say little more than I have studied, and that question's out of my part.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love Β  To spite a raven’s heart within a dove.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we! For such as we are made of, such we be. Twelfth Night Β  Β  It
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Stendhal (The Red and the Black)
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No one mentioned the sad piece of tinsel, naked in places, hanging across the chimneybreast, nor that Twelfth Night was a week ago. No one mentioned the two Christmas cards on the mantelpiece. No one mentioned them because inside they were blank.
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Andrew Barrett (A Long Time Dead (The Dead Trilogy, #1))
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Too well what love women to men may owe. In faith, they are as true of heart as we. My father had a daughter loved a man – As it might be perhaps, were I a woman, I should your lordship.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Viola to Duke Orsino: 'I'll do my best To woo your lady.' [Aside.] 'Yet, a barful strife! Whoe'er I woo, myself would be his wife.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Stealing and giving odor. Enough, no more. 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Observe him, for the love of mockery
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William Shakespeare
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pleasure will be paid one time or another.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times Thou never shouldst love woman like to me. VIOLA:And all those sayings will I overswear; And those swearings keep as true in soul As doth that orbèd continent the fire That severs day from night.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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A strong, vague persuasion that it was better to go forward than backward, and that I could go forwardβ€” that a way, however narrow and difficult, would in time openβ€” predominated over other feelings: its influence hushed them so far, that at last I became sufficiently tranquil to be able to say my prayers and seek my couch. I had just extinguished my candle and lain down, when a deep, low, mighty tone swung through the night. At first I knew it not; but it was uttered twelve times, and at the twelfth colossal hum and trembling knell, I said: β€œI lie in the shadow of St. Paul’s.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Villette)
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By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me; the malignancy of my fate might, perhaps, distemper yours; therefore I shall carve of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you.
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William Shakespeare
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Then let thy love be younger than thyself, Or thy affection cannot hold the bent: For women are as roses, whose fair flower, Being once display'd, doth fall that very hour.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Yes, and shall do till the pangs of death shake him. Infirmity, that decays the wise, doth ever make the better fool.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night (The Modern Shakespeare: The Original Play with a Modern Translation))
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As black as Vulcan in the smoke of war.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night (The Modern Shakespeare: The Original Play with a Modern Translation))
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And I, most jocund, apt, and willingly, To do you rest, a thousand deaths would die.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night (The Modern Shakespeare: The Original Play with a Modern Translation))
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For youth is bought more oft than begged or borrowed.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Love's night is noon.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Does not our lives consist of the four elements?" "Faith, so they say; but I think it rather consists of eating and drinking.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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I am sure care's an enemy to life.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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She sat like patience on a monument smiling at grief.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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A sentence is but a cheveril glove to a good wit. How quickly the wrong side may be turned outward!
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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a raven's heart within a dove.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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What use are tears? Ying had murmured to her once, back when they had just crossed their twelfth cycle of life and the wounds of Lan’s losses still cut deep every night. The dead will neither feel them nor be called by them. Grief is for the survivors, and I think that, rather than living my life in pain, I would live it in laughter and love. To the fullest.
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AmΓ©lie Wen Zhao (Song of Silver, Flame Like Night (Song of the Last Kingdom, #1))
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see you what you are, you are too proud. 240Β Β Β But if you were the devil, you are fair. My lord and master loves you – O, such love Could be but recompensed, though you were crowned The nonpareil of beauty!
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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When I was a boy in the midwest I used to go out and look at the stars at night and wonder about them. I guess every boy does that. When I wasn't looking at the stars, I was running in the my old or my brand-new tennis shoes, on my way to swing in a tree, swim in a lake, or delve in the town library to read about dinosaurs or time machines. I guess every boy has done that, too. This is a book about those stars and those tennis shoes. Mainly about the stars, beacuse that is the way I grew up, getting more and more involved with rockets and space as I moved toward my twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth years. Not that I have forgotten the tennis shoes and their powerful magic, as you will see in the last story here, which I have included not because it concerns the future, but because it gives you some sort of idea of the kind of boy I was when I was looking at the stars and thinking of the years ahead. Nor have I forgetten the dinosaurs that all boys love; they are here, too, along with a machine that travels back in time to step on a butterfly. This is a book then by a boy who grew up in a small illinois town and lived to see the space age arrive, as he hoped and dreamt it would. I dedicate these stories to all boys who wonder about the past, run swiftly in the present, and have high hopes for our future. The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for them.
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Ray Bradbury
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This year there will be an eclipse of the Moon on the fourth day of August.9 Saturn will be retrograde; Venus, direct; Mercury, variable. And a mass of other planets will not proceed as they used to.10 As a result, crabs this year will walk sideways, rope-makers work backwards, stools end up on benches, and pillows be found at the foot of the bed;11 many men’s bollocks will hang down for lack of a game-bag;12 the belly will go in front and the bum be the first to sit down; nobody will find the bean in their Twelfth Night cake; not one ace will turn up in a flush; the dice will never do what you want, however much you may flatter them;13 and the beasts will talk in sundry places.
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François Rabelais (Gargantua and Pantagruel)
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The malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours. Therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night (The Modern Shakespeare: The Original Play with a Modern Translation))
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Madman, thou errest. I say, there is no darkness but ignorance, in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night (The Modern Shakespeare: The Original Play with a Modern Translation))
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For folly that he wisely shows is fit; But wise men, folly-fallen, quite taint their wit.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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But when in other habits you are seen – Β  Orsino’s mistress, and his fancy’s queen!
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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O, sir, I will not be so hard-hearted. I will give out divers schedules of my beauty. It shall be inventoried, and every particle and utensil labeled to my will: as, item, two lips indifferent red; item, two grey eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won, Than women's are. ... For women are as roses, whose fair flow'r Being once display'd doth fall that very hour. Viola: And so they are; alas, that they are so! To die, even when they to perfection grow!
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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O thou dissembling cub! what wilt thou be When time hath sow'd a grizzle on thy case? Or will not else thy craft so quickly grow, That thine own trip shall be thine overthrow? Farewell, and take her; but direct thy feet Where thou and I henceforth may never meet.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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The devil a puritan that he is, or anything, constantly, but a time-pleaser, an affectioned ass that cons state without book and utters it by great swathes; the best persuaded of himself, so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him – and on that vice in him will my revenge find notable cause to work.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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In his bosom? In what chapter of his bosom? In his heart? In what chapter and verse of his heart? VIOLA (200) To answer by the method, in the first of his heart. To continue this metaphorβ€”in the first chapter of his heart. OLIVIA Oh, I have read it. It is heresy. Have you no more to say? Oh, I have read that. It's not a holy message, it's heresy. Do you
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night (The Modern Shakespeare: The Original Play with a Modern Translation))
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I left no ring with her. What means this lady? Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her. She made good view of me; indeed, so much That, as methought, her eyes had lost her tongue, For she did speak in starts distractedly. She loves me sure; the cunning of her passion Invites me in this churlish messenger. None of my lord's ring? Why, he sent her none. I am the man. If it be so, as 'tis, Poor lady, she were better love a dream. Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness Wherein the pregnant enemy does much. How easy is it for the proper false In women's waxen hearts to set their forms! Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we, For such as we are made of, such we be. How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly; And I (poor monster) fond as much on him; And she (mistaken) seems to dote on me. What will become of this? As I am man, My state is desperate for my master's love. As I am woman (now alas the day!), What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe? O Time, thou must untangle this, not I; It is too hard a knot for me t' untie.
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William Shakespeare
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This is the air; that is the glorious sun; This pearl she gave me, I do feel't and see't; And though 'tis wonder that enwraps me thus, Yet 'tis not madness. For though my soul disputes well with my sense, That this may be some error, but no madness, Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune So far exceed all instance, all discourse, That I am ready to distrust mine eyes And wrangle with my reason that persuades me To any other trust but that I am mad Or else the lady's mad; yet, if 'twere so, She could not sway her house, command her followers, Take and give back affairs and their dispatch With such a smooth, discreet and stable bearing As I perceive she does
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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They walked to the doors, and she unlocked them. Before she could say anything, I began the show. "Garrett! Oh, my God!" I rushed forward and threw my arms around him. "What happened? Who did this?" "I was mugged." "Do we say mugged in Albuquerque?" He glared at me. "I'm so sorry. I'll take you to the hospital." Disappointment lined the guard's face. But it quickly transformed into confusion. "Wait, I thought you said your name was Reyes. Reyes Farrow." After I gaped at him for an eternity, an eternity in which he struggled to conceal [a] mischievous grin, I turned back to her. "It is. It's Reyes Garrett Farrow. Not Reyes Alexander Farrow." I snorted and waved a dismissive hand. "That's another guy altogether." She wrinkled her forehead in suspicion. "Gotta go," I said, hurrying him along. "Have to get this man to a hospital for multiple stab wounds." "He was stabbed?" she asked with a concerned gasp. "Not yet, but the night is young.
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Darynda Jones (The Trouble with Twelfth Grave (Charley Davidson, #12))
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CYRANO: Thy name is in my heart as in a sheep-bell, And as I ever tremble, thinking of thee, Ever the bell shakes, ever thy name ringeth! All things of thine I mind, for I love all things; I know that last year on the twelfth of May-month, To walk abroad, one day you changed your hair-plaits! I am so used to take your hair for daylight That,--like as when the eye stares on the sun's disk, One sees long after a red blot on all things-- So, when I quit thy beams, my dazzled vision Sees upon all things a blonde stain imprinted. ROXANE (agitated): Why, this is love indeed!. . . CYRANO: Ay, true, the feeling Which fills me, terrible and jealous, truly Love,--which is ever sad amid its transports! Love,--and yet, strangely, not a selfish passion! I for your joy would gladly lay mine own down, --E'en though you never were to know it,--never! --If but at times I might--far off and lonely,-- Hear some gay echo of the joy I bought you! Each glance of thine awakes in me a virtue,-- A novel, unknown valor. Dost begin, sweet, To understand? So late, dost understand me? Feel'st thou my soul, here, through the darkness mounting? Too fair the night! Too fair, too fair the moment! That I should speak thus, and that you should hearken! Too fair! In moments when my hopes rose proudest, I never hoped such guerdon. Naught is left me But to die now! Have words of mine the power To make you tremble,--throned there in the branches? Ay, like a leaf among the leaves, you tremble! You tremble! For I feel,--an if you will it, Or will it not,--your hand's beloved trembling Thrill through the branches, down your sprays of jasmine! (He kisses passionately one of the hanging tendrils.) ROXANE: Ay! I am trembling, weeping!--I am thine! Thou hast conquered all of me! --Cyrano de Bergerac III. 7
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Edmond Rostand (Cyrano de Bergerac: nouveau programme (Classiques & Cie Collège (38)) (French Edition))