193

Parental discipline neglected.

Had doting Priam check'd his son's desire,

Troy had been bright with fame, and not with fire.*

How easy is it for the proper-falset

In women's waxen hearts to set their forms! 4-ii. 2.

To wilful men,

The injuries, that they themselves procure,
Must be their schoolmasters.

196

Prayers insincere, ineffectual.

The gods are deaf to hot and peevish‡ vows;
They are polluted offerings, more abhorr'd
Than spotted livers in the sacrifice.

It is the purpose, that makes strong the vow;
But vows, to every purpose, must not hold.

197

Determination with consideration.

What we do determine, oft we break.

34-ii. 4.

Purpose is but the slave to memory;
Of violent birth, but poor validity:
Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree;
But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be. 36-iii. 2.

It so falls out,

That what we have we prize not to the worth,
Whiles|| we enjoy it; but being lack'd and lost,
Why, then we rack the value; then we find
The virtue, that possession would not show us
Whiles it was ours.

199

6-iv. 1.

Mediocrity of life.

Full oft 'tis seen

Our mean** secures us; and our mere defects
Prove our commodities.

200

Disinterestedness.

Never any thing can be amiss,

When simpleness and duty tender it.

201

7-v. 1.

Mental passions, their effects.

The passions of the mind,

That have their first conception by mis-dread,

Have after-nourishment and life by care;

And what was first but fear what might be done,*

Grows elder now, and cares it be not done.t

Care is no cure, but rather corrosive,
For things that are not to be remedied.

33-i. 2.

21-iii. 3.

They that stand high, have many blasts to shake

them;

And, if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces.

Mercy is not itself, that oft looks so;
Pardon is still the nurse of second woe.

205

Treason and murder, handmaids.

Treason and murder ever kept together,
As two yoke-devils sworn to either,s purpose.

24-i. 3.

5-ii. 1.

20-ii. 2.

We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: This even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice

To our own lips.

207

Mischief.

15-i. 7.

O mischief! thou art swift To enter in the thoughts of desperate men!

Ambition puff"d,

Makes mouths at the invisible event;

Exposing what is mortal and unsure,
To all that fortune, death, and danger, dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great,

Is, not to stir without great argument.

209

36-iv. 4.

Who cannot condemn rashness in cold blood?

Anger, its mitigation.

To kill, I grant, is sin's extremest gust;*

But, in defence, by mercy, 'tis most just.†

To be in anger, is impiety;

27-iii. 5.

But who is man, that is not angry ?

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

5-iii. 1.

O thoughts of men accurst !

Past, and to come, seem best; things present, worst.

19-i. 3.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle !
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Willing misery

Outlives incertain pomp, is crown'd before:‡

The one is filling still, never complete;

15-v. 5.

The other, at high wish. Best state, contentless,
Hath a distracted and most wretched being,
Worse than the worst, content.*

214

Treason, silent in its operations.

27-iv. 3.

Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep;
And in his simple show he harbours treason.

The fox barks not, when he would steal the lamb.

215

Malice its extent.

22-iii. 1.

To cut the head off, and then hack the limbs;
Like wrath in death, and envyt afterwards.

216

The value of a good name.

Good name, in man, and woman,

Is the immediate jewel of their souls:‡

29-ii. 1.

Who steals my purse, steals trash; 'tis something,

nothing;

'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands:

But he, that filches from me my good name,

Robs me of that, which not enriches him,

And makes me poor indeed.

217

37-iii. 3.

Slander, certain in its aim.

Slander,

36-iv. 1.

Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter,

As level as the cannon to his blank,

Transports his poison'd shot.

The age is grown so picked, || that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he

galls his kibe.

36-v. 1.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows, and in miseries :

And we must take the current when it serves,

Or lose our ventures.

220

Fortune.

29-iv. 3.

When fortune means to men most good,
She looks upon them with a threatening eye.

221

Natural defects impair virtues.

16-iii. 4.

Oft it chances in particular men,
That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,

As, in their birth, (wherein they are not guilty,

Since nature cannot choose his origin,)

By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,*
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason;
Or by some habit, that too much o'er-leavens
The form of plausive manners; --that these men,-
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect;
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,†-
Their virtues else (be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo)

Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault: The dram of base

Doth all the noble substance often dout,‡

To his own scandal.

Now breathless Wrong

36-i. 4.

Shall sit and pant in your great chairs of ease;
And pursy Insolence shall break his wind,

With fear and horrid flight.

223

Riches not true which are to be courted.

Conceit, || more rich in matter than in words,
Brags of his substance, not of ornament:

27-v. 5.

They are but beggars that can count their worth.

A grandam's name is little less in love,

Than is the doting title of a mother;

35-ii. 6.

They are as children, but one step below. 24-iv. 4.