As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, / I must not look to have; but, in their stead, / Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, / Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not" (5.3.25-28).
William ShakespeareRead
An angel; or, if not,_x000D_ _x000D_ An earthly paragon.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that a person can either be angelic or exceptionally wonderful in a mortal sense.
In this quote, Shakespeare conveys the idea that individuals can possess either divine qualities or extraordinary human virtues. It emphasizes the notion of beauty and perfection, suggesting that someone can be viewed as angelic due to their virtues or as a paragon—a model of ideal traits—due to their remarkable human qualities.
In practice
When giving a speech about the impact of love, one might quote this to illustrate the extraordinary qualities found in beloved individuals.
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, / I must not look to have; but, in their stead, / Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, / Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not" (5.3.25-28).
Love bears it out even to the edge of doom.
Good company, good wine, good welcome, can make good people.
Absence doth sharpen love, presence strengthens it; the one brings fuel, the other blows it till it burns clear.
Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!
Give it an understanding, but no tongue.
You get that love from the people. It lets me know that all the madness I go through, all the stuff that the business has to offer with all its madness; it makes it worthwhile.
Where pride begins, love ceases.
The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.
If I can't enjoy the full and total happiness of love, then I want to drain its torments, its tortures to the dregs; then I want the woman I love to mistreat me, betray me, and the more cruelly the better. That too is a pleasure.
Admiration is a very short lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it still be fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.
You cease to move into yourself, away from others. You give up your antagonism. You begin to move toward others in love. God moved toward you in gracious, outgoing love, and you move toward others in that same outgoing love.
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