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
I must be cruel, only to be kind.
Interpretation
Sometimes being harsh is necessary for the greater good.
This quote from Shakespeare suggests that in certain situations, one may need to act with apparent cruelty in order to ultimately benefit another person. It reflects the idea that tough love and difficult actions can lead to positive outcomes, emphasizing the complexity of human relationships and moral choices.
In practice
In a discussion about tough decision-making, one might quote Shakespeare to illustrate the necessity of hard choices.
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.
No opinion can be trusted; even the facts may be nothing but a printer's error.
One certainty we all accept is the condition of being uncertain and insecure.
It is strange how sad it can be - sunlight in the afternoon, don't you think?
Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.
there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars
We the Living is not a novel 'about Soviet Russia.' It is a novel about Man against the State. Its basic theme is the sanctity of human life - using the word 'sanctity' not in a mystical sense, but in the sense of 'supreme value.'
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