(A blog entry in which I let some great writers do all the work)
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Blanco: Theres none of us real good and none of us real bad.*
George Bernard Shaw, The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet
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Hamlet: So oft it chances in particular men
That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth,- wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin,-
By the o'ergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
Or by some habit that too much o'erleavens
The form of plausive manners, that these men
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,
Their virtues else- be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo-
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault.
Shakespeare, Hamlet (I,4)
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Hamlet: I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse
me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.
Hamlet (III,1)
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Hamlet: My father- methinks I see my father.
Horatio: O, where, my lord?
Hamlet: In my mind's eye, Horatio.
Horatio: I saw him once. He was a goodly king.
Hamlet: He was a man, take him for all in all.
I shall not look upon his like again.
Hamlet (I,2)
***
Two conclusions we can draw from the above excerpts:
1)
Hamlet: Good my lord, will you see the players
well bestow'd? Do you hear? Let them be well us'd;
for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the
time. After your death you were better have a
bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.
Polonius: My lord, I will use them according to
their desert.
Hamlet: God's bodykins, man, much better!
Use every man after his desert, and who should
scape whipping? Use them after your own honour
and dignity. The less they deserve,
the more merit is in your bounty.
Hamlet (II,2)
2)
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.-----------------------------------------------------------
George Orwell
*Shaw never uses apostrophes.
Why not?
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