John Webster Quotes

Physicians are like kings, – they brook no contradiction.

Ferdinand: Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle: she died young. Bosola: I think not so; her infelicity Seemed to have years too many.

I know death hath ten thousand several doors For men to take their exits.

I am Duchess of Malfi still.

O, that it were possible, We might but hold some two days’ conference With the dead!

What would it pleasure me, to have my throat cut With diamonds? Or to be smothered With cassia? Or to be shot to death, with pearls?

What’s this flesh? A little crudded milk, fantastical puff-paste.

Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out.

Her melancholy seems to be fortified With a strange disdain.

You have shook hands with Reputation And made him invisible.

Why should only I… Be cased up, like a holy relic? I have youth And a little beauty.

That curious engine, your white hand.

Love mixed with fear is sweetness.

I would sooner swim to the Bermudas on Two politicians’ rotten bladders, tied Together with an intelligence heart string, Than depend on so changeable a prince’s favour.

I hope in time ’twill grow into a custom That noblemen shall come with cap and knee To purchase a night’s lodging of their wives.

The misery of us, that are born great, We are forced to woo because none dare woo us.

I have long served virtue, And never wages of her.

Ambition, madam, is a great man’s madness, That is not kept in chains, and close-pent rooms, But in fair light some lodgings, and is girt With the wild noise of prattling visitants, Which makes it lunatic beyond all cure.

Duchess: What do you think of marriage? Antonio: I take, as those that deny purgatory, It locally contains or heaven, or hell; There’s no third place in.

Duchess: Diamonds are of most precious value They say, that have passed through most jewellers’ hands. Ferdinand: Whores, by that rule, are precious.