Measure for Measure Quotes

The jury, passing on the prisoner’s life,
May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two
Guiltier than him they try.

– William Shakespeare

The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.

– William Shakespeare

Now, as fond fathers,
Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch,
Only to stick it in their children’s sight
For terror, not to use, in time the rod
Becomes more mocked than feared; so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead;
And liberty plucks justice by the nose;
The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum.

– William Shakespeare

Man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep.

– William Shakespeare

Is this her fault or mine?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?

– William Shakespeare

This will last out a night in Russia,
When nights are longest there.

– William Shakespeare

O, it is excellent
To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

– William Shakespeare

O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet,
With all her double vigour, art and nature,
Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite. Even till now,
When men were fond, I smiled and wondered how.

– William Shakespeare

Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?

– William Shakespeare

No ceremony that to great ones ‘longs,
Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.

– William Shakespeare

Might there not be a charity in sin
To save this brother’s life?

– William Shakespeare

I hold you as a thing enskyed and sainted;
By your renouncement an immortal spirit,
And to be talked with in sincerity,
As with a saint.

– William Shakespeare

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.

– William Shakespeare

We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch and not their terror.

– William Shakespeare

The miserable have no other medicine,
But only hope.

– William Shakespeare

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world.

– William Shakespeare

The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

– William Shakespeare

There, at the moated grange, resides this dejected Mariana.

– William Shakespeare

A forted residence ‘gainst the tooth of time
And razure of oblivion.

– William Shakespeare

Truth is truth
To the end of reckoning.

– William Shakespeare

Take, O, take those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn.

– William Shakespeare

My business in this state
Made me a looker on here in Vienna.

– William Shakespeare

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

– William Shakespeare

O, what may man within him hide,
Though angel on the outward side!

– William Shakespeare

The cunning livery of hell.

– William Shakespeare

Be absolute for death; either death or life
Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life:
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art.

– William Shakespeare

Every true man’s apparel fits your thief.

– William Shakespeare