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The world’s a theatre, the earth a stage
Which God and Nature do with actors fill.

— Thomas Heywood Apology for Actors (1612)

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Source, in full

Apology for Actors, (1612). Compare: "The world's a stage on which all parts are played", Thomas Middleton, A Game of Chess (1624), Act v. Sc. 1.; "All the world ’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players", Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act ii. Sc. 7.

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Society

More quotes by Thomas Heywood

I hold he loves me best that calls me Tom.

Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells (1635)

Seven cities warred for Homer being dead,
Who living had no roofe to shrowd his head.

Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells (1635)

The shepherd with his home-spun lass
As many merry hours doth pass
As courtiers with their costly girls,
Though richly decked in gold and pearls.

Her that ruled the rost in the kitchen.

With this kiss I wed thee once again.

A Woman Killed with Kindness (1607)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

Daniel Webster

Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.

Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Heywood (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.