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.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied,

And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Absalom and Achitophel. Part i. Line 163.

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise

(That last infirmity of noble mind)

To scorn delights, and live laborious days;

But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,

And think to burst out into sudden blaze,

Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears

And slits the thin-spun life.

John Milton (1608-1674): Lycidas. Line 70.

Through thick and thin, both over bank and bush,

In hope her to attain by hook or crook.

Edmund Spenser (1553-1599): Faerie Queene. Book iii. Canto i. St. 17.

Made still a blund'ring kind of melody;

Spurr'd boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin,

Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in.

John Dryden (1631-1701): Absalom and Achitophel. Part ii. Line 413.

They are too thin and bare to hide offences.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry VIII. Act v. Sc. 3.

Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise

(That last infirmity of noble mind)

To scorn delights, and live laborious days;

But the fair guerdon when we hope to find,

And think to burst out into sudden blaze,

Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears

And slits the thin-spun life.

John Milton (1608-1674): Lycidas. Line 70.