ROSALIND.
From henceforth I will, coz, and devise sports. Let me see—what think you of falling in love?
CELIA.
Marry, I prithee do, to make sport withal; but love no man in good earnest, nor no further in sport neither than with safety of a pure blush thou mayst in honour come off again.
ROSALIND.
What shall be our sport, then?
CELIA.
Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.
ROSALIND.
I would we could do so, for her benefits are mightily misplaced, and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women.
CELIA.
’Tis true, for those that she makes fair she scarce makes honest, and those that she makes honest she makes very ill-favouredly.
ROSALIND.
Nay, now thou goest from Fortune’s office to Nature’s. Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature.
Enter Touchstone.
CELIA.
No? When Nature hath made a fair creature, may she not by Fortune fall into the fire? Though Nature hath given us wit to flout at Fortune, hath not Fortune sent in this fool to cut off the argument?
ROSALIND.
Indeed, there is Fortune too hard for Nature, when Fortune makes Nature’s natural the cutter-off of Nature’s wit.