Measure for Measure quotes

Away! let’s go learn the truth of it. Exeunt Lucio and Gentlemen.

Thus, what with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows and what with poverty, I am custom-shrunk.

How now! what’s the news with you?

I do it not in evil disposition, But from Lord Angelo by special charge.

Thus can the demigod Authority Make us pay down for our offence by weight The words of heaven

; on whom it will, it will; On whom it will not, so; yet still ’tis just.

From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty: As surfeit is the father of much fast, So every scope by the immoderate use Turns to restraint.

Our natures do pursue, Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, A thirsty evil; and when we drink we die.

If could speak so wisely under an arrest, I would send for certain of my creditors: and yet, to say the truth, I had as lief have the foppery of freedom as the morality of imprisonment. What’s thy offence, Claudio?

My power? Alas, I doubt—

Our doubts are traitors And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt.

Go to Lord Angelo, And let him learn to know, when maidens sue, Men give like gods; but when they weep and kneel, All their petitions are as freely theirs As they themselves would owe them.

Enter Angelo, Escalus, and a Justice, Provost, Officers, and other Attendants, behind.

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.

Ay, but yet Let us be keen, and rather cut a little, Than fall, and bruise to death. Alas, this gentleman, Whom I would save, had a most noble father!

… place or place with wishing, Or that the resolute acting of your blood Could have attain’d the effect of your own purpose, Whether you had not sometime in your life Err’d in this point which now you censure him, And pull’d the law upon you.

’Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, Another thing to fall.

I not deny, The jury, passing on the prisoner’s life, May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two Guiltier than him they try. What’s open made to justice, That justice seizes: what know the laws That thieves do pass on thieves?

Aside. 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.

Go to: what quality are they of? Elbow is your name? why dost thou not speak, Elbow?

He cannot, sir; he’s out at elbow.

He, sir! a tapster, sir; parcel-bawd; one that serves a bad woman; whose house, sir, was, as they say, plucked down in the suburbs; and now she professes a hot-house, which, I think, is a very ill house too.

What else?

Troth, and your bum is the greatest thing about you; so that in the beastliest sense you are Pompey the Great.

Pompey, you are partly a bawd, Pompey, howsoever you colour it in being a tapster, are you not? come, tell me true: it shall be the better for you.

so that in the beastliest sense you are Pompey the Great. Pompey, you are partly a bawd, Pompey, howsoever you colour it in being a tapster, are you not? come, tell me true: it shall be the better for you.

Truly, sir, I am a poor fellow that would live.

How would you live, Pompey? by being a bawd? What do you think of the trade, Pompey? is it a lawful trade?

So you must be the first that gives this sentence, And he, that suffers.

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

Aside to Isabella. That’s well said.

Thou’rt i’ the right, girl; more o’ that.

That in the captain’s but a choleric word, Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

Aside to Isabella. Art avised o’ that? more on’t.

What, do I love her, That I desire to hear her speak again, And feast upon her eyes? What is’t I dream on? 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 wonder’d how. Exit.

From thee, even from thy virtue! What’s this, what’s this? Is this her fault or mine?

The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?

Ha! Not she: nor doth she tempt: but it is I That, lying by the violet in the sun, Do as the carrion does, not as the flower, Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be That modesty may more betray our sense Than woman’s lightness?

O place, O form, How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit, Wrench awe from fools and tie the wiser souls To thy false seeming! Blood, thou art blood:

Let’s write good angel on the devil’s horn

: ’Tis not the devil’s crest.

Ha! little honour to be much believed, And most pernicious purpose! Seeming, seeming! I will proclaim thee, Angelo; look for’t: Sign me a present pardon for my brother, Or with an outstretch’d throat I’ll tell the world aloud What man thou art.

Who will believe thee, Isabel?

My unsoil’d name, the austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my place i’ the state, Will so your accusation overweigh, That you shall stifle in your own report And smell of calumny.

Or else he must not only die the death, But thy unkindness shall his death draw out To lingering sufferance. Answer me to-morrow, Or, by the affection that now guides me most, I’ll prove a tyrant to him. As for you,

Say what you can, my false o’erweighs your true.

Exit.

So then you hope of pardon from Lord Angelo?

The miserable have no other medicine But only hope

: I’ve hope to live, and am prepared to die.

O, I do fear thee, Claudio; and I quake, Lest thou a feverous life shouldst entertain, And six or seven winters more respect Than a perpetual honour. Darest thou die?

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.

Why give you me this shame? Think you I can a resolution fetch From flowery tenderness? If I must die, I will encounter darkness as a bride, And hug it in mine arms.

To be imprison’d in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thought Imagine howling: ’tis too horrible!

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.

Sweet sister, let me live: What sin you do to save a brother’s life, Nature dispenses with the deed so far That it becomes a virtue.

O, fie, fie, fie! Thy sin’s not accidental, but a trade.

Mercy to thee would prove itself a bawd

: ’Tis best thou diest quickly.

Let me hear you speak farther. I have spirit to do any thing that appears not foul in the truth of my spirit.

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

Have you not heard speak of Mariana, the sister of Frederick the great soldier who miscarried at sea?

Sir, I know him, and I love him.

Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.

Come, sir, I know what I know.

Will’t please you walk aside? Exeunt Mariana and Isabella.

O place and greatness! millions of false eyes Are stuck upon thee

: volumes of report Run with these false and most contrarious quests Upon thy doings: thousand escapes of wit Make thee the father of their idle dreams And rack thee in their fancies.

Reenter Provost.

Sir, I will serve him; for I do find your hangman is a more penitent trade than your bawd; he doth oftener ask forgiveness.

You, sirrah, provide your block and your axe to-morrow four o’clock.

Angelo hath seen them both, and will discover the favour.

O, death’s a great disguiser

; and you may add to it. Shave the head, and tie the beard; and say it was the desire of the penitent to be so bared before his death: you know the course is common.

Tell him he must awake, and that quickly too.

Pray, Master Barnardine, awake till you are executed, and sleep afterwards.

Go in to him, and fetch him out.

but as he adjudged your brother— Being criminal, in double violation Of sacred chastity and of promise-breach Thereon dependent, for your brother’s life— The very mercy of the law cries out Most audible, even from his proper tongue, “An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!”

Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure; Like doth quit like, and measure still for measure.

Then, Angelo, thy fault’s thus manifested; Which, though thou wouldst deny, denies thee vantage. We do condemn thee to the very block Where Claudio stoop’d to death, and with like haste. Away with him!