Looking for a subject to write about...


Started thinking about the Seven Deadly Sins.

Shakepeare's perspective...


Pride

He that is proud eats up himself:
pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle.
Troilus and Cressida 2.3.152-4, Agamemnon to Ajax

Lust

They are in the very wrath of love, and they will together;
clubs cannot part them.
As You Like It 5.2.40-1, Rosalind to Orlando

This momentary joy breeds months of pain;
This hot desire converts to cold disdain.
Lucrece 690-1

Avarice

So that in venturing ill we leave to be
The things we are for that which we expect;
And this ambitious foul infirmity,
In having much, torments us with defect
Of that we have: so then we do neglect
The thing we have; and, all for want of wit,
Make something nothing by augmenting it.
The Rape of Lucrece 148-4


Envy

When Envy breeds unkind division:
There comes the ruin, there begins confusion.
1 Henry VI 4.1.195-6, Exeter

But, alack,
That monster envy, oft the wrack
Of earned praise.
Pericles 4.1.11-13, Gower

Thou dost love her, because thou knowst I love her.
Sonnet 42

This 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.
Julius Caesar 5.5.75-8, Mark Antony, of Brutus

Gluttony

They surfeited with honey and began
To loathe the taste of sweetness.
1 Henry IV 3.2.72-3, Henry IV to Hal

Eight wild-boars roasted whole at a breakfast, and but twelve persons there; is this true?
Antony and Cleopatra 2.2.220-1, Mecaenas to Domitius Enobarbus

Anger

I understand a fury in your words
But not the words.
Othello 4.2.32-3, Desdemona to Othello

The cannons have their bowels full of wrath,
And ready mounted are they to spit forth
Their iron indignation 'gainst your walls
King John 2.1.217-9, King John


Sloth

Hereditary sloth instructs me.
The Tempest 2.1.241, Sebastian

I rather would entreat thy company
To see the wonders of the world abroad,
Than, living dully sluggardized at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona 1.1.6-9, Valentine to Proteus


and other sources

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Ogden Nash