Love's Labour's Lost

By William Shakespeare QUOTATION: These earthly godfathers of Heaven’s lights,
That give a name to every fixed star,
Have no more profit of their shining nights
Than those that walk and wot not what they are.
ATTRIBUTION: William Shakespeare (1564–1616), British dramatist, poet. Biron, in Love’s Labour’s Lost, act 1, sc. 1.

QUOTATION: Taffeta phrases, silken phrases precise,
Three-piled hyperbole, spruce affectation,
Figures pedantical—these summer flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.
I do forswear them.
ATTRIBUTION: William Shakespeare (1564–1616), British dramatist, poet. Biron, in Love’s Labour’s Lost, act 5, sc. 2, l. 407-11 (1598).

Biron vows to abandon his verbosity in his attempts to woo the ladies.