John Webster Quotes

What! because we are poor Shall we be vicious?

Lovers die inward that their flames conceal.

Integrity of life is fame's best friend,Which nobly, beyond death, shall crown the end.

Condemn you me for that the duke did love me?So may you blame some fair and crystal river, For that some melancholic distracted manHath drowned himself in’t.

Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air, Or all the elements by scruples, I know not, Nor greatly care. - Shoot. Shoot!Of all deaths, the violent death is best;For from ourselves it steals ourselves so fast,The pain, once apprehended, is quite past.

O me, this place is hell.

When I go to hell, I mean to carry a bribe: for look you, good gifts evermore make way for the worst persons.

Why do we tell lies? We lie because the truth is too painful or too shameful for us to face, or because the truth is simply inconvenient and has to be suppressed before it’s allowed to disturb us. We invent lies because, for whatever reason, we want to invent reality. And the false reality which we invent, the world we make up by our lying, has one great advantage for us: It makes no claim on us. It demands nothing. It doesn’t shape us in the way that truth shapes us; it faces us with no obligations; it has no hard, resistant surfaces which we can’t get through. A lie is a made-up reality, and so never unsettles, never criticizes, never resists, never overthrows us. It’s the world, not as it is, but as we wish it to be: a world organized around us and our desires, the perfect environment in which we can be left at peace to be ourselves and to follow our own good or evil purposes.