The Alchemist quotes

No, you scarab, I’ll thunder you in pieces: I will teach you How to beware to tempt a Fury again, That carries tempest in his hand and voice.

The place has made you valiant.

No, your clothes.— Thou vermin, have I ta’en thee out of dung, So poor, so wretched, when no living thing Would keep thee company, but a spider, or worse?

You must be chief! As if you only had The powder to project with, and the work Were not begun out of equality? The venture tripartite? All things in common? Without priority? ’Sdeath! You perpetual curs,

Fall to your couples again, and cozen kindly,

And heartily, and lovingly, as you should, And lose not the beginning of a term, Or, by this hand, I shall grow factious too, And take my part, and quit you.

For which at supper, thou shalt sit in triumph,

And not be styled Dol Common, but Dol Proper,

Dol Singular: the longest cut at night, Shall draw thee for his Dol Particular.

And the highways, for beggars, to make rich. I see no end of his labours. He will make Nature ashamed of her long sleep: when art, Who’s but a step-dame, shall do more than she, In her best love to mankind, ever could:

If his dream lasts, he’ll turn the age to gold.

Hurt it! ’Tis the way To heal it, if ’twere hurt; to make it more Followed and sought: Nab, thou shalt tell her this. She’ll be more known, more talked of; and your widows Are ne’er of any price till they be famous;

Their honour is their multitude of suitors.

Send her, it may be thy good fortune. What! Thou dost not know.

or suck up Your “ha!” and “hum!” in a tune. I not deny, But such as are not graced in a state, May, for their ends, be adverse in religion, And get a tune to call the flock together:

For, to say sooth, a tune does much with women,

And other phlegmatic people; it is your bell.

He will do more, sir: when your land is gone,

As men of spirit hate to keep earth long,

In a vacation, when small money is stirring, And ordinaries suspended till the term, He’ll show a perspective, where on one side You shall behold the faces and the persons Of all sufficient young heirs in town, Whose bonds are current for commodity;

Ti, ti, ti, ti, to, ta. He does equivocate she says: Ti, ti do ti, ti ti do, ti da; and swears by the Light when he is blinded.

By this good Dark, I have nothing but a half-crown

Of gold about my wrist, that my love gave me; And a leaden heart I wore since she forsook me.

Now, Epicure, Heighten thyself, talk to her all in gold; Rain her as many showers as Jove did drops Unto his Danae; show the god a miser, Compared with Mammon. What! The stone will do’t.

She shall feel gold, taste gold, hear gold, sleep gold;

Nay, we will concumbere gold: I will be puissant, And mighty in my talk to her.—

Nay, now you court the courtier, and destroy What you would build. This art, sir, in your words, Calls your whole faith in question.

Nay, oaths are made of the same air, sir.

Nature Never bestowed upon mortality A more unblamed, a more harmonious feature; She played the stepdame in all faces else: Sweet Madam, let me be particular—

Faith, very little, sir;

A peck of coals or so, which is cold comfort, sir.

O, my voluptuous mind! I am justly punished.

Do not believe him, sir. He is the lying’st swabber! Come your ways, sir.

You are valiant out of company!

Enter Drugger, with a piece of damask.

What device should he bring forth now?

I love a teeming wit as I love my nourishment:

’Pray God he have not kept such open house, That he hath sold my hangings, and my bedding! I left him nothing else. If he have eat them, A plague o’ the moth, say I!

Aside. Surly come! And Mammon made acquainted! They’ll tell all. How shall I beat them off? What shall I do?

Nothing’s more wretched than a guilty conscience.

No, sir, he was a great physician. This, It was no bawdyhouse, but a mere chancel! You knew the lord and his sister.