“For he that once is good, is ever great.”

Success hath made me wanton.

Poor worms, they hiss at me, whilst I at home Can be contented to applaud myself, . . . with joy To see how plump my bags are and my barns.

He threatens many that hath injured one.

Blueness doth express trueness.

Silence in woman is like speech in man.

Reader look, not on his picture but his book.

Well, I will scourge those apes, And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror, As large as is the stage whereon we act; Where they shall see the time’s deformity Anatomised in every nerve, and sinew, With constant courage, and contempt of fear.

Where dost thou careless lie, Buried in ease and sloth? Knowledge that sleeps, doth die; And this security, It is the common moth, That eats on wits and arts, and oft destroys them both.

Rich apparel has strange virtues; it makes him that hath it without means esteemed for an excellent wit; he that enjoys it with means puts the world in remembrance of his means.

Language most shows a man, speak that I may see thee.

There is no doctrine will do good where nature is wanting.

Who will not judge him worthy to be robbed That sets his doors wide open to a thief, And shows the felon where his treasure lies?

Were Guilt is, Rage and Courage doth abound.

Cut Men’s throats with whisperings.

In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures, life may perfect be.

Very few men are wise by their own council, or learned by their own teaching. For he that was only taught by himself, had a fool for a master.

Religious ideas have the fate of melodies, which, once set afloat in the world, are taken up by all sorts of instruments, some of them woefully coarse, feeble, or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is detestable.

If any such point out to us our follies, we at once claim those follies as the special evidence of our wisdom.

You told me once that we shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. I thought it a grand remark. But we must intend to accomplish – not sit intending on a chair.

I think hip-hop could help rebuild America, once hip-hoppers own hip-hop… We are our own politicians, our own government, we have something to say. We’re warriors. Soldiers.

I feel like myself, strong and weak at once – allowed, at least for a little while, to be both.

Once in a while I catch myself wondering whether I would have found the courage to write if I had not started to write when I was too young to know what was good for me.

My mother once told me that we can’t survive alone,but even if we could, we wouldn’t want to. Without a faction, we have no purpose and no reason to live.

It is the city of mirrors, the city of mirages, at once solid and liquid, at once air and stone.