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As Angelo discovered in Measure for Measure, nothing corrupts like virtue.
Sep 10, 2025
I'll be supposed upon a book, his face is the worst thing about him.
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?
Truth is truth to the end of reckoning.
When once our grace we have forgot, Nothing goes right.
If you can’t measure it, you can’t fix it.
Mercy is not itself, that oft looks so; Pardon is still the nurse of second woe.
Thou hast nor youth nor age But as it were an after dinner sleep Dreaming of both.
There is a kind of character in thy life, That to the observer doth thy history, fully unfold.
All surfeit is the father of much fast.
I have a background in theater. At the time I read The Loved Ones script, I was playing Catherine the Great of Russia onstage. Straight after that, I played Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire and Isabella in Measure for Measure.
The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.
Thieves for their robbery have authority When judges steal themselves.
The jury passing on the prisoner's life may in the sworn twelve have a thief or two guiltier than him they try.
O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.
When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.
In physical science a first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.
They say best men are molded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more the better For being a little bad
Condemn the fault and not the actor of it?
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.
The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good.
Ay, but to die and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstrution 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 regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendant world.
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where.
Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.
Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.
If you can't measure it, you can't change it.
If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.
Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all! Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall: Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none: And some condemned for a fault alone.
Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.
That in the captains but a choleric word Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.
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.
Nature is not benevolent; Nature is just, gives pound for pound, measure for measure, makes no exceptions, never tempers her decrees with mercy, or winks at any infringement of her laws.
Liberty plucks justice by the nose; The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart Goes all decorum.
Man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assured.
If thou art rich, thou art poor; for, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, and death unloads thee.
If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride, and hug it in mine arms.
The sense of death is most in apprehension, And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.
The sense of death is most in apprehension.
Every true man's apparel fits your thief.
The miserable have no other medicine But only hope.
Man, proud man, drest in a little brief authority, most ignorant of what he's most assur d, glassy essence, like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, as make the angels weep.
O' What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!
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.
To receive more, we must give out what we receive. . . . For it is by giving that we set in operation the unfailing law of measure for measure. With no thought of receiving, it is impossible to avoid receiving, for the abundance you have given is returned to you in fulfillment of the law.
All's well that ends well.
All is well that ends well
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