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
Madam, you have bereft me of all words, Only my blood speaks to you in my veins.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses deep emotional anguish and a loss for words in the presence of a beloved person.
In this quote, Shakespeare conveys profound feelings of love and longing. The speaker is so overwhelmed by their emotions for the person they are addressing that they feel incapacitated, unable to articulate their thoughts. Instead, their very essence and passion are said to flow through their veins, suggesting that true feelings are often beyond verbal expression, rooted deeply within one's soul.
Themes
LoveEmotionExpressionAnguishWords
In practice
Example use cases
In a romantic speech at a wedding to illustrate the power of love.
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For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.
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You start out giving your hat, then you give your coat, then your shirt, then your skin and finally your soul.
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My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.
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The force that unites the elements to become all things is Love, also called Aphrodite; Love brings together dissimilar elements into a unity, to become a composite thing. Love is the same force that human beings find at work in themselves whenever they feel joy, love and peace. Strife, on the other hand, is the force responsible for the dissolution of the one back into its many, the four elements of which it was composed.
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When someone we love suffers, we suffer with that person, and we would not have it otherwise, because the suffering and the love are one, just as it is with God's love for us.
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How easy love makes fools of us.
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