Act Ii Quotes

HENRY:
Leave me out of it. They don't count. Maybe Brodie got a raw deal, maybe he didn't. I don't know. It doesn't count. He's a lout with language. I can't help somebody who thinks, or thinks he thinks, that editing a newspaper is censorship, or that throwing bricks is a demonstration while building tower blocks is social violence, or that unpalatable statement is provocation while disrupting the speaker is the exercise of free speech…Words don't deserve that kind of malarkey. They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good any more, and Brodie knocks their corners off. I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.
Act II, Scene 5, HENRY and ANNIE ~ Tom Stoppard

Feste. Are you ready, sir?

Orsino. Ay; prithee, sing.
[Music] 945
SONG.

Feste. Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid. 950
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet 955
On my black coffin let there be strown;
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown:
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where 960
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there!
Orsino. There's for thy pains.
Feste. No pains, sir: I take pleasure in singing, sir.

Orsino. I'll pay thy pleasure then. 965

Feste. Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid, one time or another.

From Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene 4. ~ William Shakespeare

Justice is a machine that, when someone has once given it the starting push, rolls on of itself. - John Galsworthy, Justice [1910], act II ~ John Galsworthy

I love stage work. The thing about plays is that they're perfectible. With film, you shoot that take and maybe another. During 'Spamalot,' I rewrote Act II three times. ~ Eric Idle

I cannot say your worships have delivered the matter well when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables [ ... ] our very priests must become mockers if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you speak best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your beards, and your beards deserve not so honorable a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion or to be entombed in an ass's packsaddle [ ... ] more of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians. I will be bold to take my leave with you. ~ William Shakespeare

I'll show thee best springs; I'll pluck thee berries;
I'llift fish for thee and get thee wood enough.
A plague upon the tyrant that I serve!
I'll bear him no sticks, but follow thee,
Thou wondrous man.
---Caliban
(Act II, scene 2, lines 158-162) ~ William Shakespeare

«O! be some other name:
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title.» -Act II, scene II ~ William Shakespeare

Women may fall when there's no strength in men.
Act II ~ William Shakespeare

He stopped the flyers
And by his rare example made the coward
Turn terror into sport. As weeds before
A vessel under sail, so men obeyed
And fell below his stem. His sword, Death's stamp,
Where it did mark, it took; from face to foot
He was a thing of blood, whose every motion
Was timed with dying cries. Alone he entered
The mortal gate o' th' city, which he painted
With shunless destiny; aidless came off
And with a sudden reinforcement struck
Corioles like a planet. Now all's his,
When by and by the dim of war gan pierce
His ready sense; then straight his doubled spirit
Requickened what in flesh was fatigate,
And to the battle came he, where he did
Run reeking o'er the lives of men as if
'Twere a perpetual spoil; and till we called
Both field and city ours, he never stood
To ease his breast with panting. ~ William Shakespeare

No more dams I'll make for fish,
Nor fetch in firing
At requiring,
Nor scrape tethering, nor wash dishes.
'Ban, 'Ban, Ca--Caliban
Has a new master, get a new man.
Freedom, high-day! High-day! freedom! Freedom,
high-day, freedom!
---Caliban
(Act II, scene 2, lines 178-185) ~ William Shakespeare

The science-fictional motif of lethal, infectious information - bad memes - is a fascinating one, with an extended history. One of the earliest instances is Robert W. Chambers's 'The King in Yellow' from 1895. Chambers's conceit is a malevolent play: read beyond Act II, and you go mad. ~ Paul Di Filippo

These be fine things, an if they be not sprites.
That'said a brave god and bears celestial liquor.
I will kneel to him.
--Caliban
Act II, scene 2, lines 116-118) ~ William Shakespeare

O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! - Cassio (Act II, Scene iii) ~ William Shakespeare

This ghastly state of things is what you call Bunburying, I suppose?
Algernon. Yes, and a perfectly wonderful Bunbury it is. The most wonderful Bunbury I have ever had in my life.
Jack. Well, you've no right whatsoever to Bunbury here.
Algernon. That is absurd. One has a right to Bunbury anywhere one chooses. Every serious Bunburyist knows that. ~ Oscar Wilde

Then came Act II, you seemed to change and acted strange, and why I'll never know. ~ Elvis Presley

If through no fault of his own the hero is crushed by a bulldozer in Act II, we are not impressed. Even though life is often like this - the absconding cashier on his way to Nicaragua is killed in a collision at the airport, the prominent statesman dies of a stroke in the midst of the negotiations he has spent years to bring about, the young lovers are drowned in a boating accident the day before their marriage - such events, the warp and woof of everyday life, seem irrelevant, meaningless. They are crude, undigested, unpurged bits of reality - to draw a metaphor from the late J. Edgar Hoover, they are "raw files." But it is the function of great art to purge and give meaning to human suffering, and so we expect that if the hero is indeed crushed by a bulldozer in Act II there will be some reason for it, and not just some reason but a good one, one which makes sense in terms of the hero's personality and action. In fact, we expect to be shown that he is in some way responsible for what happens to him. ~ Bernard Knox

Out o' th' moon, I do assure thee. I was the man in the moon when time was,
--Stephano
(Act II, scene 2, lines 136-137) ~ William Shakespeare

Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself. ~ William Shakespeare

Good film, television, or music keeps you awake, anxious for the next movement or act, and wanting more when it is finished. ~ John Grooters

The anxiety of the sexual act is my sexual act: a love story. ~ Melissa Broder

For Roosevelt, if a nation was unable or unwilling to act to defend its own interests, it could not expect others to respect them. Inevitably, ~ Henry Kissinger

To Life I. The Period II. The Mail III. The Night Shadows IV. The Preparation ~ Charles Dickens

I want hard stories, I demand them from myself. Hard stories are worth the difficulty. It seems to me the only way I have forgiven anything, understood anything, is through that process of opening up to my own terror and pain and reexamining it, re-creating it in the story, and making it something different, making it meaningful - even if the meaning is only in the act of the telling. ~ Dorothy Allison

That we can prescribe the terms of our own success, that we can live outside or in ignorance of the Great Economy are the greatest errors. They condemn us to a life without a standard, wavering in inescapable bewilderment from paltry self-satisfaction to paltry self-dissatisfaction. But since we have no place to live but in the Great Economy, whether or not we know that and act accordingly is the critical question, not about economy merely, but about human life itself.

It is possible to make a little economy, such as our present one, that is so short-sighted and in which accounting is of so short a term as to give the impression that vices are necessary and practically justifiable. When we make our economy a little wheel turning in opposition to what we call "nature," then we set up competitiveness as the ruling principle in our explanation of reality and in our understanding of economy; we make of it, willy-nilly, a virtue. But competitiveness, as a ruling principle and a virtue, imposes a logic that is extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, to control. That logic explains why our cars and our clothes are shoddily made, why our "wastes" are toxic, and why our "defensive" weapons are suicidal; it explains why it is so difficult for us to draw a line between "free enterprise" and crime. If our economic ideal is maximum profit with minimum responsibility, why should we be surprised to find our corporations so frequently in court and robbery on the increase? Why sh ~ Wendell Berry

That DMC Act is a disgrace. And the problem with independent art in this country is that independent artists have been economically blacklisted. ~ Lloyd Kaufman

Secular self-assertion, perhaps inevitably, developed more slowly; it was one thing to act in 'unfeminine' ways if divinely inspired, not quite so easy to act unconventionally out of personal ambition. ~ Margaret Walters

That file full of letters meant I met with a Special Needs teacher in the hallway to get something called Individualized Attention, and let me tell you, working in the hallway with a teacher is like being the street person of a school. People pass you by, and they act like they don't see you, but three steps away they've got a whole story in their heads about why you're out there instead of in the nice cozy classroom where you belong, Stupid? Unlucky? Unloved? ~ Esme Raji Codell

To act alongside a TV idol of mine, Peter Krause, was phenomenal. I watched him in 'Six Feet Under,' I watched him on 'Dirty Sexy Money' and I'll carry on watching him, and I've been lucky enough to be a part of that world with him. ~ Alex Pettyfer

There was a sound of movement, of clinking glass: Amycus was coming round. Before Harry or Luna could act, Professor McGonagall rose to her feet, pointed her wand at the groggy Death Eater, and said, "Imperio."
Amycus got up, walked over to his sister, picked up her wand, then shuffled obediently to Professor McGonagall and handed it over along with his own. Then he lay down on the floor beside Alecto. Professor McGonagall waved her wand again, and a length of shimmering silver rope appeared out of thin air and snaked around the Carrows, binding them tightly together.
"Potter," said Professor McGonagall, turning to face him again with superb indifference to the Carrows' predicament. ~ J.K. Rowling

One does not need a faith in God. Sufficient is a faith in created things, that enables one to move among objects in the conviction that they exist, persuaded of the irrefutable reality of this chair, this umbrella, this cigarette, this friendship. He who doubts himself is lost, just as someone scared of failure in love-making fails indeed. We are happy in the company of people who make us feel the unquestionable presence of the world, just as the body of the beloved gives us the certainty of those shoulders, that bosom, that curve of the hips, the surge of these as incontestable as the sea. And one who is in despair, we are taught by Singer, can act as though he believed: faith will come afterwards. ~ Claudio Magris

Being deaf is not a weakness or it shouldn't be seen as one and that's what I wanted to get across that day. It's still what I want people to see. It's the same thing with the special needs kids. They are no different than I am, than anyone is really. Just because they might act in ways that 'normal' people don't or experience life in a different way, it doesn't make them wrong or less than anyone else. We're not weak or what's wrong with the world. ~ Melyssa Winchester

I had often thought that if I managed to live through the war I wouldn't expect too much of life. How could one resent disappointment in love if life itself was continuously in doubt? Since Belgorod, terror had overturned all my preconceptions, and the pace of life had been so intense one no longer knew what elements of ordinary life to abandon in order to maintain some semblance of balance. I was still unresigned to the idea of death, but I had already sworn to myself during moments of intense fear that I would exchange anything - fortune, love, even a limb - if I could simply survive. ~ Guy Sajer

I love the fact British men act cool whatever the situation so I'm planning to recruit there. ~ Sharon Stone

Give us matter and a little motion and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces.' ... There is no end to the consequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through every atom of every ball. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A great byproduct of a TV show, movie, or play is when it can act as a catalyst for someone. ~ Jack Falahee

The manner in which we live, and that in which we ought to live, are things so wide asunder, that he who quits the one to betake himself to the other is more likely to destroy than to save himself; since any one who would act up to a perfect standard of goodness in everything, must be ruined among so many who are not good. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Genius is the act of solving a problem in a way no one has solved it before. ~ Seth Godin

You know, it's hard for me to, like, act the way I've been acting and, like, being, like, nice to everyone. And I feel, like, I deserve to be acknowledged for that. ~ Aaryn Gries

Above all, let us never forget that an act of goodness is in itself an act of happiness. It is the flower of a long inner life of joy and contentment; it tells of peaceful hours and days on the sunniest heights of our soul. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Faith intervenese not to abolish reason's autonomy nor to reduce its scope for action, but solely to bring the human being to understand that in these events it is the God of Israel who acts. ~ Pope John Paul II

I have a hard time writing. Most writers have a hard time writing. I have a harder time than most because I'm lazier than most. [ ... ] The other problem I have is fear of writing. The act of writing puts you in confrontation with yourself, which is why I think writers assiduously avoid writing. [ ... ] Not writing is more of a psychological problem than a writing problem. All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. [ ... ] It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. Especially when it goes on for years. It's much more relaxing actually to work. ~ Fran Lebowitz

There is no wall that is high enough to stop a horse with a cart filled with gold. ~ Philip II Of Macedon

It has been a great experience to act in Hollywood movies with actors like Ben Kingsley. ~ Navi Rawat

To betray is to act against, I just haven't acted at all - China Sorrows ~ Derek Landy

Narcissists are sexual vampires. Just like a vampire needs blood and cares NOT where he gets it. A narcissist thinks he is not being unfaithful because he really didn't commit to you. If it's an act it doesn't count. ~ Tracy Malone

The Queen Elizabeth II provides vast amounts of entertainment for an age that has forgotten how to amuse itself unaided. ~ Hans Koning

On the basis of his work each person is fully entitled to consider himself a part owner of the great workbench at which he is working with everyone else. A way toward that goal could be found by associating labor with the ownership of capital joint ownership of the means of work, sharing by the workers in the management and/or profits of businesses, so-called shareholding by labor, etc. ~ Pope John Paul II

When I talk to people in need, they tell me they want to hope; they are eager for opportunity; they are ready for better days. And I can tell you that every time their hopes are disappointed, all nations lose. ~ Abdallah II Of Jordan

He knows not how to speak who cannot be silent; still less how to act with vigor and decision. Who hastens to the end is silent; loudness is impotence. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

I had the good fortune of living in Rome for seven years, from 1994 to 2001. So, I kind of saw firsthand the impact that Pope John Paul II had on people. ~ Chris Matthews