Sonnet 116, 117 and 118 Quotes

• Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments; love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom: If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
• Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all, Wherein I should your great deserts repay, Forgot upon your dearest love to call, Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day; That I have frequent been with unknown minds, And given to time your own dear-purchased right; That I have hoisted sail to all the winds Which should transport me farthest from your sight. Book both my willfulness and errors down, And on just proof surmise accumulate; Bring me within the level of your frown, But shoot not at me in your wakened hate; Since my appeal says I did strive to prove The constancy and virtue of your love.
• William Shakespeare: 'Like as, to make our appetites more keen, With eager compounds we our palate urge; As, to prevent our maladies unseen, We sicken to shun sickness when we purge; Even so, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness, To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding; And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness To be diseased, ere that there was true needing. Thus policy in love, to anticipate The ills that were not, grew to faults assured, And brought to medicine a healthful state Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured; But thence I learn and find the lesson true, Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.'