For he will live, and laugh at this hereafter.

They were in the wrong; and Cassius was right.

The honest manliness of Brutus is, however, sufficient to find out
the unfitness of Cicero to be included in their enterprise, from his
affected egotism and literary vanity.

O, name him not: let us not break with him;
For he will never follow any thing,
That other men begin.

His scepticism as to prodigies and his moralizing on the weather--
"This disturbed sky is not to walk in"--are in the same spirit of
refined imbecility.

Shakespeare has in this play and elsewhere shown the same
penetration into political character and the springs of public
events as into those of everyday life. For instance, the whole
design to liberate their country fails from the generous temper and
overweening confidence of Brutus in the goodness of their cause and
the assistance of others. Thus it has always been. Those who mean
well themselves think well of others, and fall a prey to their
security. That humanity and sincerity which dispose men to resist
injustice and tyranny render them unfit to cope with the cunning and
power of those who are opposed to them. The friends of liberty trust
to the professions of others because they are themselves sincere,
and endeavour to secure the public good with the least possible hurt
to its enemies, who have no regard to anything but their own
unprincipled ends, and stick at nothing to accomplish them. Cassius