Yesterday I wrote about the final exchange between Menas and Pompey, where Menas' offered assassination of the triumvirs is rejected by Pompey, for reasons having as much to do with public perception as ethical concern. Menas' reference to someone "who seeks, and will not take when once 'tis offer'd" never getting the chance again, brought to mind one of Brutus' well-known quotes from Julius Caesar. Where, as is often the case with him, he disagrees with someone else's plan and gives eloquent reasons for doing so. Here, he is speaking to Cassius, and saying that they shouldn't wait in a defensive position for the armies of Octavius and Antony to attack, but that they should make the first move:

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;

Omitted, all the voyage of their life

Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

These lines are deservedly famed for their poetic content, and often they are quoted to support causes requiring action. Fair enough, but I think it's important to remember that Shakespeare doesn't provide us with dictums, only matters for thought and consideration, and that often the speaker and his or her words, and their results, are at odds. In this case, they do decide to follow Brutus' plan, and then lose the battle, and their lives.