The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor;
Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised!
‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 1, sc. 1, l. [253]
Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who in the lusty stealth of nature take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got ’tween asleep and wake?
‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 1, sc. 2, l. 6
I grow, I prosper;
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 1, sc. 2, l. 21
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune,—often the surfeit
of our own behaviour,—we make guilty of our own disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as
if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by
spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary
influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of
whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded
with my mother under the dragon’s tail, and my nativity was under ursa major; so that it follows I
am rough and lecherous. ’Sfoot! I should have been that I am had the maidenliest star in the
firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.
‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 1, sc. 2, l. [132]
Pat he comes, like the catastrophe of the old comedy; my cue is villanous melancholy, with a
sigh like Tom o’ Bedlam.
‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 1, sc. 2, l. [150]
Lear: Dost thou know me, fellow?
Kent: No, sir; but you have that in your countenance which I would fain call master.
Lear: What’s that?
Kent: Authority.
‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 1, sc. 4, l. [28]
Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing, nor so old to dote on her for any thing.
‘King Lear’ (1605-6) act 1, sc. 4, l. [40]
Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest.