William Shakespeare

And wer't not madness then
To make the fox surveyor of the fold.

And wer't not madness then
To make the fox surveyor of the fold.

If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, read more

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! -Twelfth Night. Act i. Sc. 1.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can read more

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination, That if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy; Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear! -A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act v. Sc. 1.

Promising is the very air o' th' time; it opens the eyes of
expectation. Performance is ever duller for read more

Promising is the very air o' th' time; it opens the eyes of
expectation. Performance is ever duller for his act; and, but in
the plainer and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying is
quite out of use. To promise is most courtly and fashionable;
performance is a kind of will or testament which argues a great
sickness in his judgment that makes it.

Would he were fatter! But I fear him not.
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
read more

Would he were fatter! But I fear him not.
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius.