Troilus and Cressida

AGAMEMNON […] Why then, you princes,
DO you with cheeks abashed behold our works
And call them shames, which are indeed naught else
But the protractive trials of great Jove
To find persistive constancy in men?
The fineness of which metal is not found in
Fortune’s love; for then the bold and coward,
The wise and fool, the artist and unread,
The hard and soft seem all affined and kin.
But in the wind and tempest of her frown,
Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan,
Puffing at all, winnows the light away,
And what hath mass or matter by itself
Lies rich in virtue and unmingled.

NESTOR […] In the reproof of chance
Lies the true proof of men. The sea being smooth,
How many shallow bauble boats dare sale
Upon her [patient] breast, making their way
With those of nobler bulk!
But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage
The gentil Thetis, and anon behold
The strong-ribbed bark through liquid mountains cut,
Bounding between the two moist elements,
Like Perseus’s horse. Where’s then the saucy boat
Whose weak untimbered sides but even now
Corrivaled greatness? Either to harbor fled
Or made a toast of Neptune. Even so
Doth valor’s show and valor’s worth divide
In storms of Fortune.

ACHILLES What, am I poor of late?
’Tis certain, greatness, once fall’n out with Fortune,
Must fall out with men too. What the declined is
He shall as soon read in the eyes of others
As feel in his own fall, for men, like butterflies,
Show not their mealy wings but to the summer,
And not a man, for being simply man,
Hath any honor, but honor for those honors
That are without him—as place, riches, favor,
Prizes of accident as oft as merit,
Which, when they fall, as being slippery standers,
The love that leaned on them, as slippery too,
Doth one pluck down another and together
Die in the fall. But ’tis not so with me.
Fortune and I are friends. I do enjoy,
At ample point, all that I did possess,
Save these men’s looks, who do, methinks, find out
Something not worth in me such rich beholding
As they have often given.

ULYSSES Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes.
Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done. Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honor bright. To have done is to hang
Quite out of fashion like a rusty mail
In monumental mock’ry. Take the instant way,
For honor travels in a strait so narrow
Where one but goes abreast. Keep, then, the path,
For Emulation hath a thousand sons
That one by one pursue. If you give way
Or turn aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an entered tide they all ush by
And leave you hindmost;
Or, like a gallant horse fall’n in first rank,
Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,
O’errun and trampled on.