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
If there were reason for these miseries, then into limits could I bind my woes. If the winds rages, doth not the sea wax mad, threat'ning the welkin with its big-swoll'n face? And wilt though have a reason for this coil? I am the sea. Hark how her sighs doth blow. She is the weeping welkin, I the earth.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote explores the chaotic nature of existence and the human experience of suffering.
In this quote, Shakespeare reflects on the profound connection between human suffering and the chaos of nature. He uses metaphors of the sea, winds, and the earth to illustrate how external turmoil often mirrors internal distress. The speaker questions the need for reason behind suffering, suggesting that such chaos may be inherent to our existence, much like the tempestuous sea that cannot be tamed by simple explanations.
Themes
SufferingChaosNatureHuman ExperienceExistence
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the nature of suffering in literature.
More from William Shakespeare
All quotes →Love bears it out even to the edge of doom.
William ShakespeareRead
Good company, good wine, good welcome, can make good people.
William ShakespeareRead
Absence doth sharpen love, presence strengthens it; the one brings fuel, the other blows it till it burns clear.
William ShakespeareRead
Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!
William ShakespeareRead
Give it an understanding, but no tongue.
William ShakespeareRead
Similar quotes
Once upon a time men were possessed by devils. Now they are not less obsessed by ideas
Carl JungRead
The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us
Octavio PazRead
The grandchildren should not bear the debts of the grandparents.
Nassim Nicholas TalebRead
And he began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
If you know that life is basically going to be horrendously difficult, at best, and all but unlivable at worst, or possibly even unlivable, do you go on? And the choice to go on is the only thing that I think can be called hope. Because if hope isn't forced to encounter the worst possibility, then it's a lie.
Tony KushnerRead
Wanderers eastward, wanderers west, Know you why you cannot rest? 'Tis that every mother's son Travails with a skeleton. Lie down in the bed of dust; Bear the fruit that bear you must; Bring the eternal seed to light, And morn is all the same as night.
A. E. HousmanRead