FESTE: And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

— Twelfth Night, V, i

BANQUO: Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all,

As the weird women promised, and, I fear,

Thou play'dst most foully for't.

— Macbeth, III, i

A quotation from Thoreau

The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable, — of a bad one, to make it less valuable. We can afford that railroad, and all merely material stock, should lose some of its value, for that only compels us to live more simply and economically; but suppose that the value of life itself should be diminished!

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American philosopher and writer
Speech (1854-07-04), “Slavery in Massachusetts,” Anti-Slavery Celebration, Framingham, Massachusetts

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/thoreau-henry-david/…

Life has become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point the track.

— From “The Hound of the Baskervilles”

“What if the White Guardian tells me something important?”

“Thank him politely.”

— The Doctor and Tegan, in “Enlightenment”

A quotation from Banklsy

Graffiti has been used to start revolutions, stop wars and generally is the voice of people who aren’t listened to. Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don’t come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they’re having a piss.

Banksy (b. 1974) England-based pseudonymous street artist, political activist, film director
Banging Your Head Against A Brick Wall (2001)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/banksy/76414/

“A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones. And their passing moods may reflect the passing moods of others.”

— Sherlock Holmes, in “The Adventure of the Creeping Man”

“The great civil war... only the army survived.”

“Well, that sounds like a well-organized war.”

— Seth and Romana, in “The Horns of Nimon”

CAPULET: All things that we ordained festival

Turn from their office to black funeral:

Our instruments to melancholy bells,

Our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast;

Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change,

Our bridal flowers serve for a buried corse,

And all things change them to the contrary.

— Romeo and Juliet, IV, v

“There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it.”

— Sherlock Holmes, in “A Study in Scarlet”

FOOL: Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill, lest it break thy neck with following it: but the great one that goes up the hill, let him draw thee after.

— King Lear, II, iv

“These 'taxes', they are like sacrifices to tribal gods?”

“Well, roughly speaking, but paying taxes is more painful.”

— Leela and the Doctor, in “The Sunmakers”

LEAR: Is man no more than this? Consider him well.

— King Lear, III, iv

A quotation from Judith Martin

Only when the temporarily able-bodied come to accept disabilities as a common human condition will we have a truly civilized society.

Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
Miss Manners’ Guide to Rearing Perfect Children, ch. 1 “Theory and Skills,” “For Auditors” (1984)

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/martin-judith/76353/

“Well, well! What next?” said he. “Brother Mycroft is coming round.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Why not? It is as if you met a tram-car coming down a country lane. Mycroft has his rails and he runs on them. His Pall Mall lodgings, the Diogenes Club, Whitehall — that is his cycle. Once, and only once, he has been here. What upheaval can possibly have derailed him?”

— Sherlock Holmes and Watson, in “The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans”

“Forgive us, ma'am.”

“For what?”

“For being so indelicate in the presence of a lady of refinement.”

“Does he mean me?”

— Litefoot and Leela, in “The Talons of Weng-Chiang”

“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”

— Sherlock Holmes, in “A Study in Scarlet”

FRIAR LAURENCE: Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied;

And vice sometime's by action dignified.

— Romeo and Juliet, II, iii

The Cabinet's accepted my report, and the whole affair is now completely closed. ... A fifty-foot monster can't swim up the Thames and attack a large building without some people noticing, but you know what politicians are like.

— The Brigadier, in “Terror of the Zygons”

HAMLET: For any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

— Hamlet, III, ii