E. Merrill Brouder > E. Merrill's Quotes

“To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism

“Jesters do oft prove prophets.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“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; 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.”
― William Shakespeare, The Tragedy Of King Lear (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)

“We are not the first
Who with best meaning have incurred the worst.
For thee, oppressèd king, I am cast down.
Myself could else outfrown false Fortune’s frown.”
― William Shakespeare

“Puisque tu existes, comme toi seule sais
exister, il n'était peut-être pas très nécessaire que ce livre existât. J'ai cru pouvoir
en décider autrement, en souvenir de la
conclusion que je voulais lui donner avant
de te connaître et que ton irruption dans
ma vie n'a pas à mes yeux rendue vaine.
Cette conclusion ne prend même son vrai
sens et toute sa force qu'à travers toi.”
― André Breton, Nadja

“Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,
The gods themselves throw incense. Have I caught thee?
He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven
And fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes.
The good years shall devour them, flesh and fell,
Ere they shall make us weep. We'll see 'em starved first.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us.”
― William Shakespeare

“All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.”
― E.B. White

“Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”
― E.B. White

“There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.”
― William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

“In time we hate that which we often fear.”
― William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

“Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
Immortal longings in me: now no more
The juice of Egypt's grape shall moist this lip:
Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear
Antony call; I see him rouse himself
To praise my noble act; I hear him mock
The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men
To excuse their after wrath: husband, I come:
Now to that name my courage prove my title!
I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life. So; have you done?
Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips.
Farewell, kind Charmian; Iras, long farewell.

Kisses them. IRAS falls and dies

Have I the aspic in my lips? Dost fall?
If thou and nature can so gently part,
The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch,
Which hurts, and is desired. Dost thou lie still?
If thus thou vanishest, thou tell'st the world
It is not worth leave-taking.”
― William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

“But yet let me lament
With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts
That thou my brother, my competitor
In top of all design, my mate in empire,
Friend and companion in the front of war,
The arm of mine own body, and the heart
Where mine his thoughts did kindle—that our stars
Unreconcilable should divide
Our equalness to this.”
― William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

“The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne, Burn’d on the water; the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggar’d all description.”
― William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

“Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”
― Robert Frost

“When valor preys on reason,
it eats the sword it fights with.”
― William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

“Be witness to me, O thou blessed moon […]
O sovereign mistress of true melancholy,
The poisonous damp of night dispunge upon me,
That life, a very rebel to my will,
May hang no longer on me. Throw my heart
Against the flint and hardness of my fault,
Which being dried with grief will break to powder,
And finish all foul thoughts.”
― William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

“On the path to truth, at every step, you set your foot down on your own heart.”
― Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm

“So it should be; that none but Antony
Should conquer Antony, but woe 'tis so!”
― William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

“I have no Life but this—
To lead it here—
Nor any Death—but lest
Dispelled from there—

Nor tie to Earths to come—
Nor Action new—
Except through this extent—
The Realm of you—”
― Emily Dickinson

“I am dying, Egypt, dying; only
I here importune death awhile, until
Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay upon thy lips.”
― William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

“However bad we may become—which God forbid—yet, when we recall how we buried Ilusha, how we loved him in his last days, and how we have been talking like friends all together, at this stone, the cruelest and most mocking of us—if we do become so—will not dare to laugh inwardly at having been kind and good at this moment! What’s more, perhaps, that one memory may keep him from great evil and he will reflect and say, ‘Yes, I was good and brave and honest then!’ Let him laugh to himself, that’s no matter, a man often laughs at what’s good and kind. That’s only from thoughtlessness. But I assure you, boys, that as he laughs he will say at once in his heart, ‘No, I do wrong to laugh, for that’s not a thing to laugh at.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Mine honor was not yielded,
But conquer'd merely.”
― William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

“But you gods will give us
Some faults to make us men.”
― William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

“Long ago one of the Cynic philosophers strutted through the streets of Athens in a torn mantle to make himself admired by everyone by displaying his contempt for convention. One day Socrates met him and said: 'I see your vanity through the hole in your mantle.' Your dirt too, sir, is vanity, and your vanity is dirty.”
― Milan Kundera, Farewell Waltz

“Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.”
― E.B. White

“Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?”
― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“Madness is the glory of this life”
― William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens

“O my good lord, the world is but a word:
Were it all yours to give it in a breath,
How quickly were it gone!”
― William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens