Bartlette's Quotations: Love's Labour 's Lost.



   
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1 Or, having sworn too hard a keeping oath,
Study to break it and not break my troth.
Act i. Sc. 1.
2 Light seeking light doth light of light beguile.
Ibid.
3 Small have continual plodders ever won
Save base authority from others' books.
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 wot not what they are.
Ibid.
4 At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth;
But like of each thing that in season grows.
Ibid.
5 A man in all the world's new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain.
Ibid.
6 A high hope for a low heaven.
Ibid.
7 And men sit down to that nourishment which is called supper.
Ibid.
8 That unlettered small-knowing soul.
Ibid.
9 A child of our grandmother Eve, a female; or, for thy more sweet understanding, a woman.
Ibid.
10 Affliction may one day smile again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow!
Ibid.
11 The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages since; but I think now 't is not to be found.
Sc. 2.
12 The rational hind Costard.
Ibid.
13 Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio.
Ibid.
14 A man of sovereign parts he is esteem'd;
Well fitted in arts, glorious in arms:
Nothing becomes him ill that he would well.
Act ii. Sc. 1.
15 A merrier man,
Within the limit of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour's talk withal.
Ibid.
16 Delivers in such apt and gracious words
That aged ears play truant at his tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished;
So sweet and voluble is his discourse.
Ibid.
17 By my penny of observation.
Act iii. Sc. 1.
18 The boy hath sold him a bargain,--a goose.
Ibid.
19 To sell a bargain well is as cunning as fast and loose.
Ibid.
20 A very beadle to a humorous sigh.
Ibid.
21 This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents.
Ibid.
22 A buck of the first head.
Act iv. Sc. 2.
23 He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink.
Ibid.
24 Many can brook the weather that love not the wind.
Ibid.
25 You two are book-men.
Ibid.
26 Dictynna, goodman Dull.
Ibid.
27 These are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion.
Ibid.
28 For where is any author in the world
Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?
Learning is but an adjunct to ourself.
Sc. 3.
29 It adds a precious seeing to the eye.
Ibid.
30 As sweet and musical
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair;
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Ibid.
31 From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain, and nourish all the world.
Ibid.
32 He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.
Act v. Sc. 1.
33 Priscian! a little scratched, 't will serve.
Ibid.
34 They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.
Ibid.
35 In the posteriors of this day, which the rude multitude call the afternoon.
Ibid.
36 They have measured many a mile
To tread a measure with you on this grass.
Sc. 2.
37 Let me take you a button-hole lower.
Ibid.
38 I have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of discretion.
Ibid.
39 A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it.
Ibid.
40 When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men.
Ibid.
41 The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.
Ibid.