Troilus and Cressida quotes

The Greeks are strong and skilful to their strength, Fierce to their skill and to their fierceness valiant;

But I am weaker than a woman’s tear, Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance,

Less valiant than the virgin in the night And skilless as unpractised infancy.

They say he is a very man per se, And stands alone.

So do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have no legs.

This man, lady, hath robbed many beasts of their particular additions; he is as valiant as the lion, churlish as the bear, slow as the elephant:

Why, he is very young: and yet will he, within three pound, lift as much as his brother Hector.

Is he so young a man and so old a lifter?

But to prove to you that Helen loves him: she came and puts me her white hand to his cloven chin—

Why, you know ’tis dimpled: I think his smiling becomes him better than any man in all Phrygia.

O, he smiles valiantly.

O yes, an ’twere a cloud in autumn.

By the same token, you are a bawd. Exit Pandarus. Words, vows, gifts, tears, and love’s full sacrifice, He offers in another’s enterprise: But more in Troilus thousand fold I see Than in the glass of Pandar’s praise may be; Yet hold I off.

Women are angels, wooing: Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.

That she beloved knows nought that knows not this: Men prize the thing ungain’d more than it is: That she was never yet that ever knew Love got so sweet as when desire did sue. Therefore this maxim out of love I teach:

But more in Troilus thousand fold I see Than in the glass of Pandar’s praise may be; Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing: Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing. That she beloved knows nought that knows not this:

Men prize the thing ungain’d more than it is

: That she was never yet that ever knew Love got so sweet as when desire did sue. Therefore this maxim out of love I teach: Achievement is command; ungain’d, beseech:

That she beloved knows nought that knows not this: Men prize the thing ungain’d more than it is: That she was never yet that ever knew Love got so sweet as when desire did sue. Therefore this maxim out of love I teach:

Achievement is command; ungain’d, beseech:

Then though my heart’s content firm love doth bear, Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear. Exeunt.

How could communities, Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogenitive and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, But by degree, stand in authentic place?

Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows!

each thing meets In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores And make a sop of all this solid globe: Strength should be lord of imbecility, And the rude son should strike his father dead: Force should be right;

Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong, Between whose endless jar justice resides, Should lose their names, and so should justice too. Then every thing includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite;

And appetite, an universal wolf,

So doubly seconded with will and power, Must make perforce an universal prey, And last eat up himself. Great Agamemnon, This chaos, when degree is suffocate, Follows the choking.

so every step, Exampled by the first pace that is sick Of his superior, grows to an envious fever Of pale and bloodless emulation: And ’tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot, Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length,

Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.

Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover’d The fever whereof all our power is sick.

All the better; their fraction is more our wish than their faction: but it was a strong composure a fool could disunite.

The amity that wisdom knits not, folly may easily untie.

Here comes Patroclus.

Your mind is the clearer, Ajax, and your virtues the fairer.

He that is proud eats up himself: pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle; and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours the deed in the praise.

I do hate a proud man, as I hate the engendering of toads.

Go we to council. Let Achilles sleep:

Light boats sail swift, though greater hulks draw deep.

Exeunt.

You have bereft me of all words, lady.

Words pay no debts, give her deeds

: but she’ll bereave you o’ the deeds too, if she call your activity in question. What, billing again? Here’s “In witness whereof the parties interchangeably”—Come in, come in: I’ll go get a fire. Exit.

Nothing, but our undertakings; when we vow to weep seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers; thinking it harder for our mistress to devise imposition enough than for us to undergo any difficulty imposed.

This is the monstruosity in love, lady, that the will is infinite and the execution confined, that the desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit.

They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able and yet reserve an ability that they never perform, vowing more than the perfection of ten and discharging less than the tenth part of one.

They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able and yet reserve an ability that they never perform, vowing more than the perfection of ten and discharging less than the tenth part of one.

They that have the voice of lions and the act of hares, are they not monsters?

Are there such? such are not we: praise us as we are tasted, allow us as we prove; our head shall go bare till merit crown it: no perfection in reversion shall have a praise in present:

Let me go and try:

I have a kind of self resides with you; But an unkind self, that itself will leave, To be another’s fool.

I would be gone: Where is my wit? I know not what I speak.

I do believe it; for they pass’d by me As misers do by beggars, neither gave to me Good word nor look: what, are my deeds forgot?

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes: Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour’d As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done: perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honour bright:

welcome ever smiles, And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was; For beauty, wit, High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,

That all with one consent praise new-born gawds, Though they are made and moulded of things past, And give to dust that is a little gilt More laud than gilt o’er-dusted. The present eye praises the present object:

Or like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank, Lie there for pavement to the abject rear, O’er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present, Though less than yours in past, must o’ertop yours;

For time is like a fashionable host That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,

And with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles, And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was;

We know each other well.

We do; and long to know each other worse.

This is the most despiteful gentle greeting, The noblest hateful love, that e’er I heard of. What business, lord, so early?

I must then to the Grecians?

A woful Cressid ’mongst the merry Greeks!

When shall we see again?

In this I do not call your faith in question So mainly as my merit: I cannot sing, Nor heel the high lavolt, nor sweeten talk, Nor play at subtle games; fair virtues all, To which the Grecians are most prompt and pregnant:

But I can tell that in each grace of these

There lurks a still and dumb-discoursive devil That tempts most cunningly: but be not tempted.

I cannot sing, Nor heel the high lavolt, nor sweeten talk, Nor play at subtle games; fair virtues all, To which the Grecians are most prompt and pregnant: But I can tell that in each grace of these

There lurks a still and dumb-discoursive devil That tempts most cunningly: but be not tempted.

Do you think I will?

Who, I? alas, it is my vice, my fault: Whiles others fish with craft for great opinion, I with great truth catch mere simplicity; Whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns, With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare.

Fear not my truth: the moral of my wit Is “plain and true;” there’s all the reach of it.

Enter Aeneas, Paris, Antenor, Deiphobus, and Diomedes.

Fie, fie upon her!

There’s language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out At every joint and motive of her body.

O, these encounterers, so glib of tongue, That give accosting welcome ere it comes, And wide unclasp the tables of their thoughts To every ticklish reader! set them down For sluttish spoils of opportunity And daughters of the game. Trumpet within.

What hath she done, prince, that can soil our mothers?

Nothing at all, unless that this were she.

Will he swagger himself out on’s own eyes?

I would croak like a raven; I would bode, I would bode. Patroclus will give me any thing for the intelligence of this whore: the parrot will not do more for an almond than he for a commodious drab.

Lechery, lechery; still, wars and lechery; nothing else holds fashion

: a burning devil take them! Exit.

I am to-day i’ the vein of chivalry: Let grow thy sinews till their knots be strong, And tempt not yet the brushes of the war. Unarm thee, go, and doubt thou not, brave boy, I’ll stand to-day for thee and me and Troy.

Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you, Which better fits a lion than a man.

What vice is that, good Troilus? chide me for it.

Lay hold upon him, Priam, hold him fast: He is thy crutch; now if thou lose thy stay,

Thou on him leaning, and all Troy on thee, Fall all together.

Come, Hector, come, go back: Thy wife hath dream’d; thy mother hath had visions; Cassandra doth foresee; and I myself Am like a prophet suddenly enrapt To tell thee that this day is ominous: Therefore, come back.

and I have a rheum in mine eyes too, and such an ache in my bones that, unless a man were cursed, I cannot tell what to think on’t. What says she there?

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart:

The effect doth operate another way. Tearing the letter. Go, wind, to wind, there turn and change together. My love with words and errors still she feeds; But edifies another with her deeds. Exeunt severally.