Julius Caesar Main Quotes Flashcards

These growing feathers plucked from Caesar’s wing
Will make him fly an ordinary pitch,
Who else would soar above the view of men
And keep us all in servile fearfulness.

When Caesar says, “do this,” it is performed.

No, Cassius, for the eye sees not itself
But by reflection, by some other things.

And since you know you cannot see yourself
So well as by reflection, I, your glass,
Will modestly discover to yourself

I love
The name of honor more than I fear death.

Ye gods, it doth amaze me
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world
And bear the palm alone.

Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

I'd rather be a villager
Than to repute himself a son of Rome
Under these hard conditions as this time
Is like to lay upon us.

Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.
He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.

I rather tell thee what is to be feared
Than what I fear, for always I am Caesar.

So can I.
So every bondman in his own hand bears
The power to cancel his captivity.

Your flower of usurpation blooms out of my seed of complacency

Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf
But that he sees the Romans are but sheep.
He were no lion were not Romans hinds.
Those that with haste will make a mighty fire
Begin it with weak straws. What trash is Rome,

But men may construe things after their fashion,
Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.

So vile a thing as Caesar! But, O grief,
Where hast thou led me? I perhaps speak this
Before a willing bondman. Then I know
My answer must be made. But I am armed,
And dangers are to me indifferent.

Oh, he sits high in all the people’s hearts,
And that which would appear offense in us,
His countenance, like richest alchemy,
Will change to virtue and to worthiness.

Him and his worth and our great need of him
You have right well conceited.

ACT 2
How that might change his nature, there’s the question.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder

That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder,
Whereto the climber upward turns his face.
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees

And therefore think him as a serpent’s egg—
Which, hatched, would as his kind grow mischievous—
And kill him in the shell.

Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.

To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, conspiracy.
Hide it in smiles and affability.

O, name him not. Let us not break with him,
For he will never follow anything
That other men begin.

Let us be sacrificers but not butchers, Caius.
We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar,

We shall be called purgers, not murderers.
And for Mark Antony, think not of him,
For he can do no more than Caesar’s arm
When Caesar’s head is off.

But when I tell him he hates flatterers,
He says he does, being then most flatterèd.
Let me work.
For I can give his humor the true bent,
And I will bring him to the Capitol.

Good gentlemen, look fresh and merrily.
Let not our looks put on our purposes,
But bear it as our Roman actors do,
With untired spirits and formal constancy.
And so good morrow to you every one.

Act 2 Scene 2
Caesar shall forth. The things that threatened me
Ne'er looked but on my back. When they shall see
The face of Caesar, they are vanishèd.

What can be avoided
Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?

Cowards die many times before their deaths.
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear,
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.

Caesar should be a beast without a heart
If he should stay at home today for fear.

No, Caesar shall not. Danger knows full well That Caesar is more dangerous than he.
We are two lions littered in one day,
And I the elder and more terrible.
And Caesar shall go forth.

I will not come today. Tell them so, Decius.

Shall Caesar send a lie?
Have I in conquest stretched mine arm so far
To be afraid to tell graybeards the truth?

Your statue spouting blood in many pipes,
In which so many smiling Romans bathed,
Signifies that from you great Rome shall suck
Reviving blood,

That every “like” is not the same, O Caesar,

My heart laments that virtue cannot live
Out of the teeth of emulation.
If thou read this, O Caesar, thou mayst live.
If not, the Fates with traitors do contrive

I could be well moved if I were as you.
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me.
But I am constant as the northern star,

o oft as that shall be,
So often shall the knot of us be called
“The men that gave their country liberty.”

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!

As Caesar loved me, I weep for him. As he was fortunate, I rejoice at it. As he was valiant, I honor him. But, as he was ambitious, I slew him.

With this I depart: that, as I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have the same dagger for myself when it shall please my country to need my death.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones

I am no orator, as Brutus is,
But, as you know me all, a plain blunt man
That love my friend. And that they know full well
That gave me public leave to speak of him.
For I have neither wit nor words nor worth,
Action nor utterance nor the power of speech,
To stir men’s blood. I only speak right on.

Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot.
Take thou what course thou wilt!

Act 4
These many, then, shall die. Their names are pricked.
Fetch the will hither, and we shall determine
How to cut off some charge in legacies.

Therefore let our alliance be combined,
Our best friends made, our means stretched.

And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear,
Millions of mischiefs

There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.
But hollow men, like horses hot at hand,
Make gallant show and promise of their mettle.

you yourself
Are much condemned to have an itching palm,
To sell and mart your offices for gold
To undeservers.

Contaminate our fingers with base bribes,
And sell the mighty space of our large honors
For so much trash as may be graspèd thus?
I had rather be a dog and bay the moon
Than such a Roman.

For I can raise no money by vile means.
By heaven, I had rather coin my heart
And drop my blood for drachmas than to wring
From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash

A friend should bear his friend’s infirmities,
But you make mine greater than they are.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

Act 5
In your bad strokes, Brutus, you give good words.
Witness the hole you made in Caesar’s heart,

If we do meet again, why, we shall smile.
If not, why then this parting was well made.

This day I breathed first. Time is come round,
And where I did begin, there shall I end.
My life is run his compass.

Caesar, thou art revenged,
Even with the sword that killed thee.

O hateful error, melancholy’s child,
Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men
The things that are not?

O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet!
Thy spirit walks abroad and turns our swords
In our own proper entrails.

Our enemies have beat us to the pit.t is more worthy to leap in ourselves
Than tarry till they push us. Good Volumnius,

Caesar, now be still.
I killed not thee with half so good a will.

his was the noblest Roman of them all.
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar.
He only in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.