"What's past is prologue."- William Shakespeare (Tempest, I, i, 257)
The dark backward and abysm of time.
- William Shakespeare (Tempest, I, ii, 50)
"Lets not burden our remembrance with a heaviness that's gone."
- William Shakespeare (The tempest, Act V, Scene 1)
"When to the sessions of sweet silent thoughtI summon up remembrance of things past."- William Shakespeare (Sonnet 30)
"O, Call back yesterday, bid time return."- William Shakespeare (Richard II, III, ii, 69)
Rest, rest, perturbed spirit.
- William Shakespeare
Be patient, for the world is broad and wide.
- William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet: Act 3, Scene 3)
Patience, thou young and rose-lipped cherubin
- William Shakespeare (Othello, Act 4, Scene 2, Page 4)
Though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod.
- William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act II, sc. 1
"Have patience and endure."
- William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing, IV, i, 253)
Though this be madness,
yet there is method in it.
- William Shakespeare (Hamlet, II, ii, 207)
Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.
- William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, I, v, 35)
Now my charms are all o'verthrown
And what strength I have's mine own.
- William Shakespeare (Tempest, Epilogue, I)
"To sleep, perchance to dream."
- William Shakespeare (Henry IV, Part Two, IV, v, 67)
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's Contumely,
The pangs of disprized Love, the Law’s delay,
The insolence of Office, and the Spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would Fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveller returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all,
And thus the Native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o'er, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard their Currents turn awry,
And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy Orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
Have broke their sleep with thoughts
their brains with care,
their bones with industry
- William Shakespeare (Henry IV, Part Two, IV, v, 67)
All things are ready, if our minds are so. - William Shakespeare (Henry V, IV, iii, 71)
The tempest in my mind
Doth from my senses take all feeling
Save what beats there
- William Shakespeare (King Lear, III, iv, 12)
I hate and love.
How can that be?
I know not, but I feel the agony
- Catallus, Roman poet (84BC - 54BC)
Life! we have been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;—
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not Good-night, but in some brighter clime
Bid me Good-morning!
They friendship oft has made
my heart to ache
Do be my enemy - for friendships sake
- William Blake
“I am a part of all that I have met.”
- Alfred Tennyson, The Complete Poetical Works of Tennyson
"Dreams are composed of many things . . . of images and hopes, of fears and memories." ~ Dream (Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman: Fables & Reflections")
"No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose..........." - from Letter No. 1, Letters To A Young Poet
"Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to argumentations, discussion, or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating." - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letter 3, Letters to A Poet.
If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.
His body mouldering in the grave, his soul marching on.
- from a poem about John Brown, lines added over the years but one version is by William W. Patton
