I bear a charmed life.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act v. Sc. 8.

I could lie down like a tired child,

And weep away the life of care

Which I have borne, and yet must bear.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): Stanzas written in Dejection, near Naples. Stanza 4.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact:

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,

That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act v. Sc. 1.

We bear it calmly, though a ponderous woe,

And still adore the hand that gives the blow.

John Pomfret (1667-1703): Verses to his Friend under Affliction.

Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,

Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Prologue to the Satires. Line 197.

Bounding billows, cease your motion,

Bear me not so swiftly o'er.

Mary Robinson (1758-1799): Bounding Billows.

Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish;

A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,

A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,

A forked mountain, or blue promontory

With trees upon 't.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Antony and Cleopatra. Act iv. Sc. 14.

What man dare, I dare:

Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,

The arm'd rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger,—

Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves

Shall never tremble.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act iii. Sc. 4.

Ye gods, it doth amaze me

A man of such a feeble temper should

So get the start of the majestic world

And bear the palm alone.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Julius Caesar. Act i. Sc. 2.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep:

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to,—'t is a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause: there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 1.

To bear is to conquer our fate.

Thomas Campbell (1777-1844): On visiting a Scene in Argyleshire.

O happiness! our being's end and aim!

Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate'er thy name:

That something still which prompts the eternal sigh,

For which we bear to live, or dare to die.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): Essay on Man. Epistle iv. Line 1.

Yet I argue not

Against Heav'n's hand or will, nor bate a jot

Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer

Right onward.

John Milton (1608-1674): Sonnet xxii. To Cyriac Skinner.