Daily Inspiration Quote by William Shakespeare

Moral clarity is cheap; follow-through is the scarce resource. Shakespeare’s line slices open a familiar self-flattery: we like to imagine that once we “know” the good, the rest is logistics. He insists the opposite. If virtue were as effortless as virtue-signaling, the world would already look like a solved problem: chapels upgraded into grand churches, cottages inflated into palaces. The exaggeration is the point. He uses architectural and class imagery to show how quickly ethical ease would rewrite society’s visible hierarchies.

The subtext is a jab at armchair righteousness and the comforting gap between intention and action. “To know what were good to do” flatters the conscience; it lets people feel morally solvent without paying in inconvenience, risk, or sacrifice. Shakespeare frames that gap as systemic, not merely personal. If individual willpower were the only barrier, the transformation would be ubiquitous. The fact that it isn’t suggests sturdier constraints: appetite, fear, status, habit, the friction of real life.

Context matters: this comes from The Merchant of Venice, spoken by Portia, a character who watches men wrap their choices in piety and principle while pursuing advantage. The line anticipates the play’s larger critique of moral bookkeeping - who gets to call themselves righteous, and at what cost to others. It also lands as Renaissance skepticism about human perfectibility: reason can map the good, but it can’t guarantee the doing. Shakespeare’s brilliance is making that philosophical point feel like a streetwise observation, delivered with a dry, almost impatient clarity.