What we all need in few lines.
Most of us already know it!
“Words are the most powerful thing in the universe. Words are containers. They contain faith, or fear, and they produce after their kind.”
Charles Capps
Image on Unsplash by Eduardo Olszewski
We all search for lines that depict our lives. Whether it is the quote needed for any social media platform or writing a literary piece, we all want to have a compact quote with deep meanings. Over the years more and more meaningful stuff has been written but some literary pieces have no comparison.
Shakespeare, the greatest English writer has portrayed all what we need in few lines. His some lines are the essence of life’s experiences. I pondered over and over on his lines from the blockbuster play ‘Hamlet’. It is parting advice of Polonius to his son, Laretes, which is not only an message to his son but all of us. No other lines can have all that meanings in such compact form. All we need to have at the very least is to think about it.
“Words; the powerful air that can change the mind, the body and the spirit in the twinkle of an eye! He who don’t know words don’t know life!”
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
These lines are best for character building and kernel of all the stuff a father can ask from his son.
- Keep your thoughts to yourself.
Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act. - Limits for relationships
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar,
- Careful for new friends
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
- Avoid fighting, but fight bravely if you have to
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
- Be a good listener
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
- Be open to criticism
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement.
- Pay heed to appearance
Costly thy habit as thy purse can but,
But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
- No borrowing, no lending
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
- Be true to yourself
This above all: to think own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou casnt not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in there!
Polonius’s advice to his son, Laertes,
Shakespeare’s Hamlet
“There exists, for everyone, a sentence - a series of words - that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you. If you’re lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of getting the first.”
Philip K. Dick,
So, for the time being, forget about Polonius’s character. He had a greyish character but he had the best intentions for his son. And here is what we see, excellent parting lines which tell us how to conduct ourselves in the world. They are unique in their very nature but have deep meanings and are advantageous when followed.
