Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Tempest. Act iv. Sc. 1.

I am but a gatherer and disposer of other men's stuff.

Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639): Preface to the Elements of Architecture.

And let me wring your heart; for so I shall,

If it be made of penetrable stuff.

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

  Doct.      Not so sick, my lord,

As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies,

That keep her from her rest.

  Macb.        Cure her of that.

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd,

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,

Raze out the written troubles of the brain,

And with some sweet oblivious antidote

Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff

Which weighs upon the heart?

  Doct.        Therein the patient

Must minister to himself.

  Macb.  Throw physic to the dogs: I 'll none of it.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Macbeth. Act v. Sc. 3.

When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

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

A deal of skimble-skamble stuff.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part I. Act iii. Sc. 1.

Stuff the head

With all such reading as was never read:

For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,

And write about it, goddess, and about it.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Dunciad. Book iv. Line 249.

I count life just a stuff

To try the soul's strength on.

Robert Browning (1812-1890): In a Balcony.