SHORT SELECTIONS FROM SHAKESPEARE

NOTE TO THE PUPIL. The following selections are made to show you how the writings of Shakespeare have become a part of our common life. No doubt you will find here many expressions familiar to you which you had no idea were from Shakespeare. It will serve to show you what a mine of wealth his writings are. No one has any claim to be considered well read who is not familiar with the Bible and Shakespeare. Some one said that all other books in the English language might be destroyed, and yet leave us an exceedingly rich literature.

AULTING ambition o'erleaps itself.

VAULTI

Conscience does make cowards of us all.

Thrice is he armed that has his quarrel just.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.

All that glitters is not gold.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Uneasy lies the head. that wears a crown.

Make assurance doubly sure.

The course of true love never did run smooth.

The whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

Sweet are the uses of adversity.

The better part of valor is discretion.

The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.

A quicksand of deceit.

Men's evil manners live in brass, their virtues
We write in water.

They that touch pitch will be defiled.

He is well paid that is well satisfied.

Grim visag'd war has smoothed his wrinkled front.

Familiar in his mouth as household words.

He jests at scars that never felt a wound.

Loved not wisely but too well.

Sleep that knits up the ravel'd sleeve of care.

One may smile and smile and be a villain.

Harp not on that string.

More sinn'd against than sinning.

I pause for reply.

Some of us will smart for it.

The game is up.

The short and long of it.

'Tis neither here nor there.

An itching palm.

Trifles light as air.

As true as steel.

To thine own self be true.

There is a tide in the affairs of man,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
And make us rather bear the ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling.

But man, proud man!

Drest in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd

Plays such fantastic tricks before high Heaven,

As make the angels weep.

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough hew them how we will.

I could have better spared a better man.

Ay, every inch a king.

O that men should put an enemy in their
Mouths to steal away their brains!

It is the green-eyed monster.

And thereby hangs a tale.

Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

In maiden meditation fancy free.

As merry as the day is long.

We have seen better days.

He hath eaten me out of house and home.

The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is often interred with their bones.

He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you
Would think the truth were a fool.

Oh, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

'Tis as easy as lying.

If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well

It were done quickly.

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

A horse, a horse! my kingdom for a horse.

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.

He that filches from me my good name,
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.

Chewing the food of sweet and bitter fancy.
Condemn the fault and not the actor of it.
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness,
And some have greatness thrust upon them.
Every one can master a grief but he that has it.
Use doth breed a habit in a man.

Stand not upon the order of your going.

This was the most unkindest cut of all.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.