Isabella's arguments for mercy

Measure for Measure is a play where Virtue and Mercy win.  I'm finding it interesting to watch Shakespeare work with his themes: virtue and vice, justice and mercy.  Today I focus on Isabella's arguments for clemency, some of which are quite powerful and moving:

"No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does."

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"Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy. How would you be,    
If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made."

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"O, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant."

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"Could great men thunder
As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,
For every pelting, petty officer
Would use his heaven for thunder;  
Nothing but thunder! Merciful Heaven,
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,  
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep;"

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"Go to your bosom;    
Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know
That's like my brother's fault: if it confess
A natural guiltiness such as is his,
Let it not sound a thought upon your tongue
Against my brother's life."


William Shakespeare
Measure for Measure