This continuation page contains additional source-backed quotations not shown in the initial 50-quotation overview. Return to the topic guide and browse collection.
“We do pray for mercy, and that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.”
Portia turns the desire to receive mercy into a responsibility to practice it, making forgiveness a consistency test rather than a one-way request.
The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1; conclusion of the central argument in Portia’s mercy speech.
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
The dramatic line relocates evil from an imagined elsewhere into immediate human experience and frightening events in the present.
Act 1, Scene 2; Ferdinand describes the terror surrounding the shipwreck.
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”
Shared human tendencies can connect people across status and difference, even when the behavior being shared is imperfect.
Troilus and Cressida, Act III, Scene 3, Project Gutenberg #1528; Ulysses speaks to Achilles. ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin’ is immediately defined by the following lines: people ‘with one consent praise new-born gauds’ and the present eye praises the present object. The retained line therefore belongs to Ulysses’s argument about novelty, reputation and forgotten past merit, not an uncomplicated statement of sentimental universal fellowship or Shakespearean autobiography.
“The best portion of a good man’s life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”
A good life is measured through small acts of care that may never become famous or even remain in memory.
Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey; the speaker reflects on small, often unremembered acts of kindness and love.
