King Lear quotes

Peace, Kent!

Come not between the dragon and his wrath.

I loved her most, and thought to set my rest On her kind nursery. Hence, and avoid my sight! So be my grave my peace, as here I give Her father’s heart from her! Call France; who stirs? Call Burgundy.

Hence, and avoid my sight! So be my grave my peace, as here I give Her father’s heart from her! Call France; who stirs? Call Burgundy. Cornwall and Albany, With my two daughters’ dowers digest this third:

Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.

I do invest you jointly with my power, Pre-eminence, and all the large effects That troop with majesty. Ourself, by monthly course, With reservation of an hundred knights, By you to be sustain’d, shall our abode Make with you by due turns.

Kent, on thy life, no more.

My life I never held but as a pawn To wage against thy enemies;

nor fear to lose it, Thy safety being the motive.

Do:

Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow Upon thy foul disease.

Revoke thy doom; Or, whilst I can vent clamour from my throat, I’ll tell thee thou dost evil.

But even for want of that for which I am richer, A still-soliciting eye, and such a tongue As I am glad I have not, though not to have it Hath lost me in your liking.

Better thou Hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better.

Is it but this—a tardiness in nature Which often leaves the history unspoke That it intends to do? My lord of Burgundy, What say you to the lady? Love’s not love When it is mingled with regards that stand Aloof from the entire point.

Is it but this—a tardiness in nature Which often leaves the history unspoke That it intends to do? My lord of Burgundy, What say you to the lady?

Love’s not love When it is mingled with regards that stand Aloof from the entire point.

Will you have her? She is herself a dowry.

Let your study Be to content your lord, who hath received you At fortune’s alms. You have obedience scanted, And well are worth the want that you have wanted.

Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides:

Who cover faults, at last shame them derides. Well may you prosper!

Enter Edmund, with a letter.

Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law

My services are bound. Wherefore should I Stand in the plague of custom, and permit The curiosity of nations to deprive me, For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?

Well, then, Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land: Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund As to the legitimate: fine word—legitimate! Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed, And my invention thrive, Edmund the base Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:

Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

Kent banish’d thus! and France in choler parted! And the king gone to-night! subscribed his power! Confined to exhibition! All this done Upon the gad! Edmund, how now! what news?

machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves. Find out this villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banished! his offence, honesty! ’Tis strange. Exit.

This is the excellent foppery of the world

, that, when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behavior—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance;

Take heed, sirrah; the whip.

Truth’s a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out, when Lady the brach may stand by the fire and stink.

A pestilent gall to me!

Then ’tis like the breath of an unfee’d lawyer; you gave me nothing for’t. Can you make no use of nothing, nuncle?

Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.

To Kent. Prithee, tell him, so much the rent of his land comes to: he will not believe a fool.

How now, daughter! what makes that frontlet on? Methinks you are too much of late i’ the frown.

Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to care for her frowning; now thou art an O without a figure: I am better than thou art now; I am a fool, thou art nothing.

To Goneril. Yes, forsooth, I will hold my tongue; so your face bids me, though you say nothing.

May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse? Whoop, Jug! I love thee.

Doth any here know me? This is not Lear:

Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes? Either his notion weakens, his discernings Are lethargied—Ha! waking? ’tis not so. Who is it that can tell me who I am?

that it may live, And be a thwart disnatured torment to her! Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth; With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks; Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits To laughter and contempt; that she may feel

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child!

Away, away! Exit.

If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I’ld have thee beaten for being old before thy time.

Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.

O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!

I know ’tis from Cordelia, Who hath most fortunately been inform’d Of my obscured course; and shall find time From this enormous state, seeking to give Losses their remedies. All weary and o’erwatch’d, Take vantage, heavy eyes, not to behold This shameful lodging.

Fortune, good night: smile once more: turn thy wheel!

Sleeps.

Hear me, my lord; What need you five and twenty, ten, or five, To follow in a house where twice so many Have a command to tend you?

O, reason not the need: our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous:

Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s: thou art a lady; If only to go warm were gorgeous, Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st, Which scarcely keeps thee warm.

Enter King Lear and Fool.

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!

You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!

Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!

Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:

I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children, You owe me no subscription: then let fall Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:

hide thee, thou bloody hand; Thou perjured, and thou simular man of virtue That art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake, That under covert and convenient seeming Hast practised on man’s life: close pent-up guilts, Rive your concealing continents, and cry These dreadful summoners grace.

I am a man More sinn’d against than sinning.

Alack, bare-headed! Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel; Some friendship will it lend you ’gainst the tempest: Repose you there; while I to this hard house— More harder than the stones whereof ’tis raised;

This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the duke Instantly know; and of that letter too: This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me That which my father loses; no less than all:

The younger rises when the old doth fall.

Exit.

But I will punish home: No, I will weep no more. In such a night To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure. In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril! Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all—

O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;

No more of that.

This tempest will not give me leave to ponder On things would hurt me more. But I’ll go in. To the Fool. In, boy; go first. You houseless poverty— Nay, get thee in. I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep. Fool goes in.

Poor naked wretches, whereso’er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;

Why, thou wert better in thy grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies.

Is man no more than this? Consider him well.

Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha! here’s three on ’s are sophisticated! Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare, forked animal as thou art.

The foul fiend bites my back.

He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse’s health, a boy’s love, or a whore’s oath.

It shall be done; I will arraign them straight. To Edgar. Come, sit thou here, most learned justicer; To the Fool. Thou, sapient sir, sit here. Now, you she foxes!

Lest it see more, prevent it.

Out, vile jelly! Where is thy lustre now?

All dark and comfortless. Where’s my son Edmund? Edmund, enkindle all the sparks of nature, To quit this horrid act.

Alack, sir, you cannot see your way.

I have no way, and therefore want no eyes; I stumbled when I saw:

full oft ’tis seen, Our means secure us, and our mere defects Prove our commodities. O dear son Edgar, The food of thy abused father’s wrath! Might I but live to see thee in my touch, I’ld say I had eyes again!

I’ the last night’s storm I such a fellow saw; Which made me think a man a worm: my son Came then into my mind; and yet my mind Was then scarce friends with him: I have heard more since.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.

Aside. How should this be? Bad is the trade that must play fool to sorrow, Angering itself and others.—Bless thee, master!

Aside. How should this be?

Bad is the trade that must play fool to sorrow,

Angering itself and others.—Bless thee, master!

Alack, sir, he is mad.

’Tis the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind.

Do as I bid thee, or rather do thy pleasure; Above the rest, be gone.

The trick of that voice I do well remember: Is ’t not the king?

Ay, every inch a king: When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.

I pardon that man’s life. What was thy cause? Adultery? Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No: The wren goes to ’t, and the small gilded fly Does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive;

O, let me kiss that hand!

Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.

O ruin’d piece of nature! This great world Shall so wear out to nought. Dost thou know me?

What, art mad?

A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears

: see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Thou hast seen a farmer’s dog bark at a beggar?

Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lust’st to use her in that kind For which thou whipp’st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.

Through tatter’d clothes small vices do appear; Robes and furr’d gowns hide all.

Plate sin with gold, And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks: Arm it in rags, a pygmy’s straw does pierce it. None does offend, none, I say, none; I’ll able ’em:

I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloucester: Thou must be patient; we came crying hither: Thou know’st, the first time that we smell the air, We wawl and cry. I will preach to thee: mark.

When we are born, we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools

: this a good block; It were a delicate stratagem, to shoe A troop of horse with felt: I’ll put ’t in proof; And when I have stol’n upon these sons-in-law, Then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!

Pray, do not mock me:

I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upward, not an hour more nor less;

And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks I should know you, and know this man; Yet I am doubtful for I am mainly ignorant What place this is; and all the skill I have Remembers not these garments;

You must bear with me:

Pray you now, forget and forgive: I am old and foolish.

Exeunt all but Kent and Gentleman.

What, in ill thoughts again?

Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither; Ripeness is all: come on.

And that’s true too. Exeunt.

so we’ll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too, Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out;

And take upon’s the mystery of things, As if we were God’s spies

: and we’ll wear out, In a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones, That ebb and flow by the moon.

No, no, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison:

We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage:

When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news;

Let’s exchange charity. I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund; If more, the more thou hast wrong’d me. My name is Edgar, and thy father’s son.

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to plague us:

The dark and vicious place where thee he got Cost him his eyes.

Thou hast spoken right, ’tis true;

The wheel is come full circle: I am here.

Methought thy very gait did prophesy A royal nobleness: I must embrace thee: Let sorrow split my heart, if ever I Did hate thee or thy father!