Meaning of “One can never consent to creep when one…”

As You Like It, Act II, Scene 1, Duke Senior; 1919 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by Jack R. Crawford, printed page 24 / Wikisource scan leaf 36. “Sweet are the uses of adversity” occurs in Duke Senior’s Forest of Arden reflection on exile, winter and the lessons he claims to find outside court life. It remains fictional dramatic speech rather than Shakespeare’s autobiographical advice or a modern psychological claim about hardship.

The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit; Project Gutenberg #28163. The surrounding text describes evolution from “lower” to “higher” in spiritual terms; this is Trine’s philosophical-religious position, not a scientific law of human development.

Speech in Canandaigua, New York, August 3, 1857.

Unspoken Sermons; Project Gutenberg #9057. The short excerpt comes from a longer explicitly theological hierarchy of forms of life and must be read in that religious setting.

Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5; Ophelia speaks during her disrupted state, so the line remains dramatic dialogue rather than Shakespearean autobiography.

Self-Help, Chapter XI, “Self-Culture—Facilities and Difficulties,” Project Gutenberg #935. The passage follows Charles James Fox’s contrast between early success and perseverance after failure, then leads into examples of discoveries and learning produced through mistakes and failed attempts.