How like a winter hath my absence been. From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen, What old December's bareness everywhere!

Action

Suit the action to the world, the world to the action, with this special observance, that you overstep not the modesty of nature.

Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing.

Adversity

Through tattered clothes, small vices do appear. Robes and furred gowns hide all.

Age and Aging

Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly? Is not your voice broken, your wind short, your chin double, your wit single, and every part about you blasted with antiquity?

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. [Merchant Of Venice]

Argument

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

Astronomy

These earthly godfathers of Heaven's lights, that give a name to every fixed star, have no more profit of their shining nights than those that walk and know not what they are.

Beauty

To me, fair friend, you never can be old. For as you were when first your eye I eyed. Such seems your beauty still.

Birth

When we are born we cry that we are come.. to this great stage of fools.

Business

To business that we love we rise bedtime, and go to't with delight.

Ceremony

Ceremony was but devised at first to set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes, recanting goodness, sorry ere 'Tis shown; but where there is true friendship, there needs none.

Chastity

Your old virginity is like one of our French withered pears: it looks ill, it eats dryly.

Children

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

Compassion

Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.

Conceit

Conceit, more rich in matter than in words, brags of his substance: they are but beggars who can count their worth.

Contentment

He that is well paid is well satisfied.

Courage

But screw your courage to the sticking-place and we'll not fail.

Cries and Crying

I have full cause of weeping, but this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws or ere I'll weep.

Danger

Send danger from the east unto the west, so honor cross it from the north to south.

Death and Dying

I care not, a man can die but once; we owe God and death.

The undiscovered country form whose born no traveler returns. [Hamlet]

Debt

I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse: borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable.

Deception

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

Destiny

Such as we are made of, such we be.

Doubt

Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we might win, by fearing to attempt.[Measure For Measure]

Dreams

That, if then I had waked after a long sleep, will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, the clouds me thought would open and show riches ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked I cried to dream again.

Effort

Nothing can come of nothing.

Envy

Oh, what a bitter thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes.

Excuses

And oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.

Faces

The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes.

Fame

Death makes no conquest of this conqueror: For now he lives in fame, though not in life.

Farewells

Come, let's have one other gaudy night. Call to me. All my sad captains. Fill our bowls once more. Let's mock the midnight bell.

Fate

There is 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; on such a full sea we are now afloat; and we must take the current the clouds folding and unfolding beyond the horizon. when it serves, or lose our ventures.

Faults

Love to faults is always blind, always is to joy inclined. Lawless, winged, and unconfined, and breaks all chains from every mind.

Fear

Of all base passions, fear is the most accursed.

Fools and Foolishness

Lord, what fools these mortals be.

Friends and Friendship

Friendship is constant in all other things, Save in the office and affairs of love.

Good and Evil

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.

Greatness

Be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.

He is not great who is not greatly good.

Guilt

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; the thief doth fear each bush an officer.

Hatred

Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.

History and Historians

There is a history in all men's lives.

Honor

Why should honor outlive honestly? [Orthello]

Humankind

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god -- the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!

Importance

Much Ado About Nothing,

Justice

Time is the justice that examines all offenders. [As You Like It]

Laughter

Present mirth hath present laughter. What's to come is still unsure.

Life and Living

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale.

Losers and Losing

Wise men never sit and wail their loss, but cheerily seek how to redress their harms.

Love

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.

To say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days.

Lovers

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety. Other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies.

Manners

Manhood is melted into courtesies, valor into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones, too.

Medicine

By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death will seize the doctor too.

Mind

Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove.

Modern and Modernism

For we which now behold these present days have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

Moralists

Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Music

Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?

Past

What is past is prologue.

Patience

Who can be patient in extremes? [Henry Vi]

Perfection

Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.

Pity

Soft pity enters an iron gate.

Potential

Lord we may know what we are, but know not what we may be.

Praise

There's not one wise man among twenty will praise himself.

Procrastination

In delay there lies no plenty.

Punishment

And where the offence is, let the great axe fall.

Questions

To be or not to be that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the stings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing them, end them. [Hamlet]

Reputation

Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I ha lost my reputation, I ha lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial!

Retirement

Fear no more the heat o the sun, nor the furious winter's rages. Thou thy worldly task hast done, home art gone and taken thy wages.

Riches

O, what a world of vile ill-favored faults, looks handsome in three hundred pounds a year!

Security

Security is the chief enemy of mortals.

Self-respect

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Sin

I am a man more sinned against than sinning.

Smile

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain. [Hamlet]

Talkativeness

A good old man, sir. He will be talking. As they say, when the age is in, the wit is out.

Thoughts and Thinking

Thought is free.

Travel and Tourism

Journeys end in lovers meeting.

Virtue

Assume a virtue if you have it not.

Vow

'Tis not the many oaths that make the truth; But the plain single vow, that is vow'd true.

Wisdom

To be wise and love exceeds man's might.

Words

It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.

Youth

A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.