Shakespeare

  Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
  Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
  To the last syllable of recorded time;
  And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
  The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
  Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
  And then is heard no more. It is a tale
  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
  Signifying nothing.

  Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
  I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
  The evil that men do lives after them;
  The good is oft interred with their bones;
  So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
  Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
  If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
  And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it.
  Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest–
  For Brutus is an honourable man;
  So are they all, all honourable men–
  Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral.
  He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
  But Brutus says he was ambitious;
  And Brutus is an honourable man.
  He hath brought many captives home to Rome
  Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
  Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
  When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
  Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
  Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
  And Brutus is an honourable man.
  You all did see that on the Lupercal
  I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
  Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
  Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
  And, sure, he is an honourable man.
  I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
  But here I am to speak what I do know.
  You all did love him once, not without cause:
  What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
  O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
  And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
  My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
  And I must pause till it come back to me.
  

  I'll make my heaven to dream upon the crown,
  And, whiles I live, to account this world but hell,
  Until my mis-shaped trunk that bears this head
  Be round impaled with a glorious crown.
  And yet I know not how to get the crown,
  For many lives stand between me and home:
  And I,--like one lost in a thorny wood,
  That rends the thorns and is rent with the thorns,
  Seeking a way and straying from the way;
  Not knowing how to find the open air,
  But toiling desperately to find it out,--
  Torment myself to catch the English crown:
  And from that torment I will free myself,
  Or hew my way out with a bloody axe.
  Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,
  And cry 'Content' to that which grieves my heart,
  And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
  And frame my face to all occasions.
  I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall;
  I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk;
  I'll play the orator as well as Nestor,
  Deceive more slily than Ulysses could,
  And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.
  I can add colours to the chameleon,
  Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
  And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
  Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?
  Tut, were it farther off, I'll pluck it down.
  

  Now is the winter of our discontent
  Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
  And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
  In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
  Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
  Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
  Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
  Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
  Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
  And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
  To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
  He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
  To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
  But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
  Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
  I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
  To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
  I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
  Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
  Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
  Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
  And that so lamely and unfashionable
  That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
  Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
  Have no delight to pass away the time,
  Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
  And descant on mine own deformity:
  And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
  To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
  I am determined to prove a villain
  And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
  Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
  By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
  To set my brother Clarence and the king
  In deadly hate the one against the other:
  And if King Edward be as true and just
  As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
  This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up,
  About a prophecy, which says that ‘G’
  Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be.
  Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: