William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England’s national poet and the “Bard of Avon”. (William Shakespeare Quotes)
“A beastly ambition, which the gods grant thee t’
William Shakespeare
attain to! If thou wert the lion, the fox would
beguile thee; if thou wert the lamb, the fox would
eat three: if thou wert the fox, the lion would
suspect thee, when peradventure thou wert accused by
the ass: if thou wert the ass, thy dullness would
torment thee, and still thou livedst but as a
breakfast to the wolf: if thou wert the wolf, thy
greediness would afflict thee, and oft thou shouldst
hazard thy life for thy dinner: wert thou the
unicorn, pride and wrath would confound thee and
make thine own self the conquest of thy fury: wert
thou a bear, thou wouldst be killed by the horse:
wert thou a horse, thou wouldst be seized by the
leopard: wert thou a leopard, thou wert German to
the lion and the spots of thy kindred were jurors on
thy life: all thy safety were remotion and thy
defence absence. What beast couldst thou be, that
were not subject to a beast? and what a beast art
thou already, that seest not thy loss in
transformation!”
Timon of Athens
“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”
William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
“A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
William Shakespeare
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardoned, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”
Romeo and Juliet
“A good heart is the sun and the moon; or rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly.”
William Shakespeare
Henry V
“A good moral, my lord: it is not enough to speak, but to speak true.”
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear
William Shakespeare
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it.”
Love’s Labour’s Lost
“A leaner action rend us. What’s amiss, May it be gently heard. When we debate Our trivial difference loud, we do commit Murther in healing wounds.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“A murderer’s guilt is easier to hide than feelings of love. Midday is like nighttime for love—that’s how brightly passion shines.”
William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night
“A nature such as his, which has been amplified by all his successes, disdains his own shadow, which he walks on at noon.”
William Shakespeare
Coriolanus
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
“A sad tale’s best for winter: I have one of sprites and goblins.”
William Shakespeare
The Winter’s Tale
“A sceptre snatched with an unruly hand
William Shakespeare
Must be boisterously maintained as gained,
And he that stands upon a slippery place
Makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up;
That John may stand then, Arthur needs must fall;
So be it, for it cannot be but so.”
King John
“A world in which the choices we make do not finally matter, because our wills are already fixed beneath the weight of a crushing determinism, is not a human world.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“A wretched soul, bruised with adversity,
William Shakespeare
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;
But were we burdened with light weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain.”
The Comedy of Errors
“Affection is a coal that must be cool’d, Else suffer’d it will set the heart on fire.”
William Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis
“Affliction is enamoured of thy parts,
William Shakespeare
And thou art wedded to calamity.”
Romeo and Juliet
“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.”
William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
“All places that the eye of heaven visits are to a wise man ports and happy havens. Teach thy necessity to reason thus; there is no virtue like necessity.”
William Shakespeare
Richard II
“All that follow their noses are led by their eyes but blind men; and there’s not a nose among twenty but can smell him that’s stinking.”
William Shakespeare
King Lear
“All the world’s a stage,
William Shakespeare
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”
All’s Well That Ends Well
“All things are ready, if our mind be so.” (William Shakespeare Quotes)
William Shakespeare
Henry V
“Although experience teach us this is true,
William Shakespeare
That peaceful quietness brings most delight,
When most of all abuses are controlled;
Yet, insomuch it shall be known that we
As well can master our affections
As conquer other by the dint of sword”
King Edward III
“An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star!”
William Shakespeare
King Lear
“And as the morning steals upon the night, melting the darkness, so their rising senses begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle their clearer reason.”
William Shakespeare
The Tempest
“And given to fornications, and to taverns and sack
William Shakespeare
and wine and metheglins, and to drinkings and
swearings and starings, pribbles and prabbles?”
The Merry Wives of Windsor
“And in her eye there hath appeared a fire,
William Shakespeare
To burn the errors that these princes hold
Against her maiden truth. Call me a fool;
Trust not my reading nor my observations,
Which with experimental seal doth warrant
The tenor of my book; trust not my age,
My reverence, calling, nor divinity,
If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here
Under some biting error.”
Much Ado About Nothing
“And oftentimes excusing of a fault
William Shakespeare
Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse,
As patches set upon a little breach
Discredit more in hiding of the fault
Than did the fault before it was so patched.”
King John
“And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it.”
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
“And thus I clothe my naked villainy
William Shakespeare
With odd old ends stolen out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”
Richard III
“And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
William Shakespeare
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
This many summers in a sea of glory,
But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride
At length broke under me and now has left me,
Weary and old with service, to the mercy
Of a rude stream that must forever hide me.
Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate you.
I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched
Is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favors!
There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have;
And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,
Never to hope again.”
Henry VIII
“And where two raging fires meet together, they do consume the thing that feeds their fury.”
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
“And with a little pin bores through his castle wall and farewell king.”
William Shakespeare
Richard II
“And worse I may be yet: the worst is not
William Shakespeare
So long as we can say ‘This is the worst.”
King Lear
“Appear to him, as he to me appears,
William Shakespeare
All melting; though our drops this difference bore,
His poison’d me, and mine did him restore.”
A Lover’s Complaint
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods.
William Shakespeare
They kill us for their sport.”
King Lear
“Be great in act, as you have been in thought.”
William Shakespeare
King John
“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
William Shakespeare
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.”
The Tempest
“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”
William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night
“Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye.”
William Shakespeare
Love’s Labour’s Lost
“Before, I loved thee as a brother, John,
William Shakespeare
But now, I do respect thee as my soul.”
King Henry IV, Part 1
“Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.”
William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night
“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.”
William Shakespeare
The Merry Wives of Windsor
“Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end;
William Shakespeare
Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend.”
Richard III
“But great men tremble when the lion roars”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“But I am bound upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like moulten lead.”
William Shakespeare
King Lear
“But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all ‘We died at such a place;’ some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.”
William Shakespeare
Henry V
“But it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, which, by often rumination, wraps me in the most humorous sadness.”
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
“But jealous souls will not be answered so.
William Shakespeare
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they’re jealous. It is a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself.”
Othello
“But love, first learned in a lady’s eyes,
William Shakespeare
Lives not alone immured in the brain,
But, with the motion of all elements,
Courses as swift as thought in every power,
And gives to every power a double power,
Above their functions and their offices.
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover’s ears will hear the lowest sound,
When the suspicious head of theft is stopped:
Love’s feeling is more soft and sensible
Than are the tender horns of cockled snails:
Love’s tongue proves dainty Baccus gross in taste.
For valour, is not love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?
Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo’s lute, strung with his hair;
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink were tempered with Love’s sighs.”
Love’s Labour’s Lost
“But man, proud man,
William Shakespeare
Dressed 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 makes the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.”
Measure for Measure
“But tis strange: And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the Instruments of Darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in deepest consequence.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“But yet let me lament
William Shakespeare
With tears as sovereign as the blood of hearts
That thou my brother, my competitor
In top of all design, my mate in empire,
Friend and companion in the front of war,
The arm of mine own body, and the heart
Where mine his thoughts did kindle—that our stars
Unreconcilable should divide
Our equalness to this.”
Antony and Cleopatra
“But you are wise,
William Shakespeare
Or else you love not, for to be wise and love
Exceeds man’s might; that dwells with gods above.”
Troilus and Cressida
“But you gods will give us
William Shakespeare
Some faults to make us men.”
Antony and Cleopatra
“But you, that are polluted with your lusts, Stained with the guiltless blood of innocents, Corrupt and tainted with a thousand vices, Because you want the grace that others have, You judge it straight a thing impossible To compass wonders but by help of devils.”
William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part 1
“By the pricking of my thumbs,
William Shakespeare
Something wicked this way comes.”
Macbeth
“Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,
William Shakespeare
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.”
Romeo and Juliet
“Coal-black is better than another hue,
William Shakespeare
In that it scorns to bear another hue;
For all the water in the ocean
Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white,
Although she lave them hourly in the flood.”
Titus Andronicus
“Come and take choice of all my library and so beguile thy sorrow.”
William Shakespeare
Titus Andronicus
“Come away, come away, Death,
William Shakespeare
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath,
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white stuck all with yew, O prepare it!
My part of death no one so true did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there be strewn:
Not a friend, not a friend greet
My poor corpse, where my bones shall be thrown.
A thousand thousand sighs to save, lay me O where
Sad true lover never find my grave, to weep there!”
Twelfth Night
“Come unto these yellow sands,
William Shakespeare
And then take hands.
Curtsied when you have and kissed
The wild waves whist,
Foot is featly here and there;
And, sweet sprites, the burden bear.”
The Tempest
“Come what come may, time and the hour run through the roughest day.” (William Shakespeare Quotes)
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.”
William Shakespeare
The Merry Wives of Windsor
“Come, I’ll be friends with thee, Jack: thou art going to the wars; and whether I shall ever see thee again or no, there is nobody cares.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“Comfort thy self, as I do, gentle Queen,
William Shakespeare
With hope of sharp, unheard of, dire revenge.–
He bids me to provide his funeral,
And so I will; but all the Peers in France
Shall mourners be, and weep out bloody tears,
Until their empty veins be dry and sere:
The pillars of his hearse shall be his bones;
The mould that covers him, their City ashes;
His knell, the groaning cries of dying men;
And, in the stead of tapers on his tomb,
An hundred fifty towers shall burning blaze,
While we bewail our valiant son’s decease.”
King Edward III
“Conscience doth make cowards of us all.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
William Shakespeare
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe:
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.
March on, join bravely, let us to’t pell-mell;
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.”
Richard III
“Could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth;”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“Could I come near your beauty with my nails,
William Shakespeare
I could set my ten commandments in your face.”
King Henry VI, Part 2
“Dark shall be my light and night my day;
William Shakespeare
To think upon my pomp shall be my hell”
King Henry VI, Part 2
“Death lies on her like an untimely frost
William Shakespeare
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.”
Romeo and Juliet
“Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come”
William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
“Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night,
William Shakespeare
The time of night when Troy was set on fire;
The time when screech-owls cry and ban-dogs howl,
And spirits walk and ghosts break up their graves,
That time best fits the work we have in hand.”
King Henry VI, Part 2
“Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
“Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flattery, for where a heart is hard they make no battery.”
William Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis
“Do all men kill all the things they do not love?
William Shakespeare
Shylock: Hates any man the thing he would not kill?
Bassanio: Every offence is not a hate at first.”
The Merchant of Venice
“Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. then your love would also change.”
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
“Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
William Shakespeare
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whilst, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own read.”
Hamlet
“Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak.”
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
“Don’t waste your love on somebody, who doesn’t value it.”
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
“Double, double, toil and trouble;
William Shakespeare
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!”
Macbeth
“Doubt thou the stars are fire;
William Shakespeare
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.”
Hamlet
“Experience is by industry achieved,
William Shakespeare
And perfected by the swift course of time.”
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through fog and filthy air.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
William Shakespeare
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages;
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
Fear no more the frown o’ the great;
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke:
Care no more to clothe and eat;
To thee the reed is as the oak:
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this, and come to dust.
Fear no more the lightning-flash,
Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone;
Fear not slander, censure rash;
Thou hast finished joy and moan;
All lovers young, all lovers must
Consign to thee, and come to dust.
No exorciser harm thee!
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!
Nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consummation have;
And renowned be thy grave!”
Cymbeline
“Few love to hear the sins they love to act.”
William Shakespeare
Pericles
“For death remembered should be like a mirror,
William Shakespeare
Who tells us life’s but breath, to trust it error.”
Pericles
“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
William Shakespeare
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poisoned by their wives: some sleeping killed;
All murdered: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be feared and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour’d thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!”
Richard II
“For never anything can be amiss, When simpleness and duty tender it.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“For now I stand as one upon a rock
William Shakespeare
Environed with a wilderness of sea.”
Titus Andronicus
“For truth can never be confirmed enough,
William Shakespeare
Though doubts did ever sleep.
Pericles
“For where thou art, there is the world itself,
William Shakespeare
With every several pleasure in the world,
And where thou art not, desolation.”
King Henry VI, Part 2
“Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.”
William Shakespeare
Cymbeline
“Fortune knows we scorn her most when most she offers blows.”
William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
“Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome; therefore I will depart unkissed.”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
“Four days will quickly steep themselves in nights; Four nights will quickly dream away the time; And then the moon, like to a silver bow new bent in heaven, shall behold the night of our solemnities.”
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“From this day to the ending of the world,
William Shakespeare
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhood’s cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”
Henry V
“From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
William Shakespeare
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world.”
Love’s Labour’s Lost
“Full fathom five thy father lies;
William Shakespeare
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong
Hark! now I hear them,—Ding-dong, bell.”
The Tempest
“Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment. But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy; For the apparel oft proclaims the man, And they in France of the best rank and station Are of a most select and generous chief in that.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“Give me that man that is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him in my heart’s core, in my heart of heart, as I do thee.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“God shall be my hope, my stay, my guide and lantern to my feet.”
William Shakespeare
Henry V
“Golden lads and girls all must as chimney sweepers come to dust.”
William Shakespeare
Cymbeline
“Good Lord, what madness rules in brainsick men
William Shakespeare
When for so slight and frivolous a cause
Such factious emulations shall arise!”
Henry VI, Part 1
“Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
William Shakespeare
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
’twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.”
Othello
“Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,
William Shakespeare
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”
Romeo and Juliet
“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.” (William Shakespeare Quotes)
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“Good without evil is like light without darkness which in turn is like righteousness whith out hope.”
William Shakespeare
All’s Well That Ends Well
“Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry, Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.”
William Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis
“Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
William Shakespeare
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty look, repeats his words,
Remembers me of his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form”
King John
“Had I but died an hour before this chance
William Shakespeare
I had lived a blessed time; for from this instant
There’s nothing serious in mortality.
All is but toys, renown and grace is dead,
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.”
Macbeth
“Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love. That inward beauty and invisible; Or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move each part in me that were but sensible: Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see, yet should I be in love by touching thee. ‘Say, that the sense of feeling were bereft me, and that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch, and nothing but the very smell were left me, yet would my love to thee be still as much; for from the stillitory of thy face excelling comes breath perfum’d that breedeth love by smelling.”
William Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis
“Hang there like a fruit, my soul, Till the tree die!”
William Shakespeare
Cymbeline
“He eats nothing but doves, love, and that breeds hot blood, and hot blood beget hot thoughts, and hot thoughts beget hot deeds, and hot deeds is love.”
William Shakespeare
Troilus and Cressida
“He is the half part of a blessed man,
William Shakespeare
Left to be finished by such as she;
And she a fair divided excellence,
Whose fullness of perfection lies in him.”
King John
“He kisses her, and she by her good will / Will never rise, so he will kiss her still.”
William Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis
“He says he loves my daughter. I think so too, for never gazed the moon upon the water as he’ll stand and read as ’twere my daughter’s eyes; and, to be plain, I think there is not half a kiss to choose who loves another best.”
William Shakespeare
The Winter’s Tale
“He that commends me to mine own content
William Shakespeare
Commends me to the thing I cannot get.
I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself:
So I, to find a mother and a brother,
In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.”
The Comedy of Errors
“He that drinks all night, and is hanged betimes in the morning, may sleep the sounder all the next day.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man. He that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
“He that is strucken blind cannot forget the precious treasure of his eyesight lost.”
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
“He that hath a will to die by himself fears it not from another.”
William Shakespeare
Coriolanus
“Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot
William Shakespeare
That it do singe yourself.”
Henry VIII
“Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, but seeming so, for my peculiar end: for when my outward action doth demonstrate the native act and figure of my heart in compliment extern, ’tis not long after but I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at: I am not what I am.”
William Shakespeare
Othello
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
William Shakespeare
The Tempest
“Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;
William Shakespeare
Life and these lips have long been separated:
Death lies on her like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.”
Romeo and Juliet
“Here have we war for war, and blood for blood,
William Shakespeare
Controlment for controlment: so answer France.”
King John
“Here is my hand, and here I firmly vow
William Shakespeare
Never to woo her more, but do forswear her
As one unworthy all the former favors
That I have fondly flattered her withal.”
The Taming of the Shrew
“He’s of the colour of the nutmeg. And of the heat of the ginger…. he is pure air and fire; and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness while his rider mounts him; he is indeed a horse, and all other jades you may call beasts.”
William Shakespeare
Henry V
“His nature is too noble for the world:
William Shakespeare
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for’s power to thunder. His heart’s his mouth:
What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent;
And, being angry, does forget that ever
He heard the name of Death.”
Coriolanus
“Hope is a lover’s staff; walk hence with that
William Shakespeare
And manage it against despairing thoughts.”
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
“How mightily sometimes we make us comforts of our losses!”
William Shakespeare
All’s Well That Ends Well
“How much salt water thrown away in waste
William Shakespeare
To season love, that of it doth not taste.”
Romeo and Juliet
“How soon this mightiness meets misery; And if you can be merry then, I’ll say A man may weep upon his wedding-day.”
William Shakespeare
Henry VIII
“I am a bastard, too. I love bastards! I am bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind, bastard in valor, in everything illegitimate.”
William Shakespeare
Troilus and Cressida
“I am afeard there are few die well that die in battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument?”
William Shakespeare
Henry V
“I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“I am glad I was up so late, for that’s the reason I was up so early.”
William Shakespeare
Cymbeline
“I am in this earthly world, where to do harm is often laudable, to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.”
William Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part 2
“I am not yet of Percy’s mind, the Hotspur of the North; he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots as a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife, ‘Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.”
William Shakespeare
King Henry IV, Part 1
“I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter
William Shakespeare
and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.”
Othello
“I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all. Believe none of us.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“I am your wife if you will marry me.
William Shakespeare
If not, I’ll die your maid. To be your fellow
You may deny me, but I’ll be your servant Whether you will or no.”
The Tempest
“I assure thee: setting the attractions of my
William Shakespeare
good parts aside I have no other charms.”
The Merry Wives of Windsor
“I can again thy former light restore,
William Shakespeare
Should I repent me: but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning’s pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume.”
Othello
“I can see he’s not in your good books,’ said the messenger.
William Shakespeare
‘No, and if he were I would burn my library.”
Much Ado About Nothing
“I cannot be a man with wishing, therefore I will die a woman with grieving.”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
“I charge thee, fling away ambition. By that sin fell the angels.”
William Shakespeare
Henry VIII
“I dare do all that may become a man;
William Shakespeare
Who dares do more, is none”
Macbeth
“I do feel it gone, But know not how it went”
William Shakespeare
The Winter’s Tale
“I do I know not what, and fear to find
William Shakespeare
Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind.
Fate, show thy force. Ourselves we do not owe.
What is decreed must be; and be this so.”
Twelfth Night
“I do love nothing in the world so well as you- is not that strange?”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
“I do profess to be no less than I seem; to serve him truly that will put me in trust: to love him that is honest; to converse with him that is wise, and says little; to fear judgment; to fight when I cannot choose; and to eat no fish.”
William Shakespeare
King Lear
“I go and it is done. The bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
“I have almost forgotten the taste of fears: The time has been, my senses would have cooled to hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir as life were isn’t: I have supt full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, cannot once start me.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“I have done penance for contemning Love; Whose high imperious thoughts have punished me with bitter fasts, with penitential groans, with nightly tears, and daily heart-sore sighs; For, in revenge of my contempt for love, Love hath chaos’s sleep from my enthralled eyes and made them watchers of my own heart’s sorrow.”
William Shakespeare
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
“I have great comfort from this fellow. Methinks he hath no drowning mark upon him. His complexion is perfect gallows.”
William Shakespeare
The Tempest
“I have more care to stay
William Shakespeare
than will to go.”
Romeo and Juliet
“I know I love in vain, strive against hope;
William Shakespeare
Yet in this captious and intenible sieve
I still pour in the waters of my love
And lack not to lose still: thus, Indian-like,
Religious in mine error, I adore
The sun, that looks upon his worshipper,
But knows of him no more.”
All’s Well That Ends Well
“I know it well, sir; you have an exchequer of words, and, I think, no other treasure to give your followers; for it appears by their bare liveries that they live by your bare words.”
William Shakespeare
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
“I know you all, and will awhile uphold
William Shakespeare
The unyoked humour of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wished-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So, when this loose behaviour I throw off
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men’s hopes;
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I’ll so offend to make offence a skill,
Redeeming time when men think least I will.”
King Henry IV, Part 1
“I praise God for you, sir: your reasons at dinner have been sharp and sententious; pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy.”
William Shakespeare
Love’s Labour’s Lost
“I pray you, do not fall in love with me, for I am falser than vows made in wine.”
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
“I say, there is no darkness
William Shakespeare
but ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled than
the Egyptians in their fog.”
Twelfth Night
“I see a woman may be made a fool,
William Shakespeare
If she had not a spirit to resist.”
The Taming of the Shrew
“I think he’ll be to Rome as is the osprey to the fish, who takes it by sovereignty of nature.”
William Shakespeare
Coriolanus
“I think the devil will not have me damned, lest the oil that’s in me should set hell on fire.”
William Shakespeare
The Merry Wives of Windsor
“I to the world am like a drop of water
William Shakespeare
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.”
The Comedy of Errors
“I want that glib and oily art to speak and purpose not, since what I well intend, I’ll do’t before I speak.”
William Shakespeare
King Lear
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;
William Shakespeare
For now hath time made me his numbering clock:
My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar
Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,
Whereto my finger, like a dial’s point,
Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.
Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is
Are clamorous groans, which strike upon my heart,
Which is the bell: so sighs and tears and groans
Show minutes, times, and hours.”
Richard II
“I will go tell him of Hermia’s flight:
William Shakespeare
Then to the wood will he to-morrow night
Pursue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“I will have such revenges on you both,
William Shakespeare
That all the world shall—I will do such things—
What they are, yet I know not, but they shall be
The terrors of the earth!”
King Lear
“I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains.”
William Shakespeare
Othello
“I would not wish any companion in the world but you, Nor can imagination form a shape, Besides yourself, to like of.”
William Shakespeare
The Tempest
“I, that have neither pity, love, nor fear.
William Shakespeare
Indeed, ’tis true that Henry told me of;
For I have often heard my mother say
I came into the world with my legs forward:
Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste,
And seek their ruin that usurp’d our right?
The midwife wonder’d and the women cried
‘O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth!’
And so I was; which plainly signified
That I should snarl and bite and play the dog.
Then, since the heavens have shaped my body so,
Let hell make crook’d my mind to answer it.
I have no brother, I am like no brother;
And this word ‘love,’ which graybeards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another
And not in me: I am myself alone.”
King Henry VI, Part 3
“I’ll example you with thievery:
William Shakespeare
The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea; the moon’s an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;
The sea’s a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears; the earth’s a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen
From general excrement: each thing’s a thief.”
Timon of Athens
“If after every tempest come such calms,
William Shakespeare
May the winds blow till they have wakened death!”
Othello
“If all the year were playing holidays; To sport would be as tedious as to work.”
William Shakespeare
King Henry IV, Part 1
“If her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near her, she would infect to the north star!”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
“If I had my mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do my liking: in the meantime, let me be that I am, and seek not to alter me.”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
“If I were a woman I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me and breaths that I defied not: and, I am sure, as many as have good beards or good faces or sweet breaths will, for my kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.”
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
“If it be true that good wine needs no bush,
William Shakespeare
’tis true that a good play needs no epilogue;
yet to good wine they do use good bushes,
and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues.”
As You Like It
“If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
William Shakespeare
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We’ld jump the life to come. But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips. He’s here in double trust;
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which overleaps itself
And falls on the other.”
Macbeth
“If music be the food of love, play on;
William Shakespeare
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe’er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.”
Twelfth Night
“If the skin were parchment and the blows you gave were ink,
William Shakespeare
Your own handwriting would tell you what I think.”
The Comedy of Errors
“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.” (William Shakespeare Quotes)
William Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice
“If we are true to ourselves, we can not be false to anyone.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“If you can look into the seeds of time And say which grain will grow and which will not, Speak, then, to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favors nor your hate.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“Ignomy in ransom and free pardon
William Shakespeare
Are of two houses; lawful mercy
Is nothing kin to foul redemption.”
Measure for Measure
“I’ll be supposed upon a book, his face is the worst thing about him.”
William Shakespeare
Measure for Measure
“I’ll break my staff, bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and deeper than did ever plummet sound, I’ll drown my book!”
William Shakespeare
The Tempest
“I’ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall;
William Shakespeare
I’ll slay more gazers than the basalisks;
I’ll play the orator as well as Nestor,
Decieve more slily that Ulysses could,
And like a Sinon, take another Troy.
I can add colors to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?
Tut! were it further off, I’ll pluck it down.”
King Henry VI, Part 3
“I’ll find a day to massacre them all
William Shakespeare
And raze their faction and their family,
The cruel father and his traitorous sons,
To whom I sued for my dear son’s life,
And make them know what ’tis to let a queen
Kneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain.”
Titus Andronicus
“I’ll so offend, to make offence a skill,
William Shakespeare
Redeeming time when men think least I will.”
King Henry IV, Part 1
“Ill-weaved ambition, how much art thou shrunk! When that this body did contain a spirit a kingdom for it was too small a bound. But now two paces of the vilest earth are room enough”
William Shakespeare
King Henry IV, Part 1
“I’m worse than mad: I have kept back their foes,
William Shakespeare
While they have told their money and let out
Their coin upon large interest, I myself
Rich only in large hurts. All those for this?
Is this the balsam that the usuring senate
Pours into captains’ wounds? Banishment!”
Timon of Athens
“In nature there’s no blemish but the mind;
William Shakespeare
None can be called deformed but the unkind:
Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil
Are empty trunks, o’erflourished by the devil.”
Twelfth Night
“In thee hath neither sting, knot, nor confine, For thou art all, and all things else are thine.”
William Shakespeare
A Lover’s Complaint
“In time we hate that which we often fear.”
William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
“Innocent sleep. Sleep that soothes away all our worries. Sleep that puts each day to rest. Sleep that relieves the weary laborer and heals hurt minds. Sleep, the main course in life’s feast, and the most nourishing.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“It cannot countervail the exchange of joy That one short minute gives me in her sight. Do thou but close our hands with holy words, Then love-devouring death do what he dare, It is enough I may but call her mine.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“It is a glorious thing to stablish peace,
William Shakespeare
And kings approach the nearest unto God
By giving life and safety unto men”
King Edward III
“It is an heretic that makes the fire,
William Shakespeare
Not she which burns isn’t.”
The Winter’s Tale
“It is excellent to have a giant’s strength But it is tyrannous To use it like a giant”
William Shakespeare
Measure for Measure
“It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue; but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“It is silliness to live when to live is torment, and then have we a prescription to die when death is our physician.”
William Shakespeare
Othello
“It’s easy for someone to joke about scars if they’ve never been cut.”
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
“Journeys end in lovers meeting,
William Shakespeare
Every wise man’s son doth know.”
Twelfth Night
“Julius Caesar is an ambivalent study of civil conflict. As in Richard II, the play is structured around two protagonists rather than one. Cesar and Brutus are more alike one another than either would care to admit. This antithetical balance reflects a dual tradition: the medieval view of Dante and Chaucer condemning Brutus and Cassius as conspirators, and the Renaissance view of Sir Philip Sidney and Ben Johnson condemning Caesar as tyrant. Those opposing views still live on in various 20th-century productions which seek to enlist them play on the side of conservatism or liberalism.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“Keep time! How sour sweet music is when time is broke and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men’s lives. I wasted time and now doth time waste me.”
William Shakespeare
Richard II
“Kneel not to me.
William Shakespeare
The power that I have on you is to spare you;
The malice towards you to forgive you. Live,
And deal with others better.”
Cymbeline
“Know the grave doth gape for thee thrice wider than for other men.”
William Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part 2
“Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven”
William Shakespeare
King Henry VI, Part 2
“Let me be ignorant and in nothing good,
William Shakespeare
But graciously to know I am no better.”
Measure for Measure
“Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
“Let me have war, say I: it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it’s spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.”
William Shakespeare
Coriolanus
“Let me play the lion too: I will roar that I will do any man’s heart good to hear me. I will roar that I will make the duke say ‘Let him roar again, let him roar again.”
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“Let me twine
William Shakespeare
Mine arms about that body, where against
My grained ash an hundred times hath broke
And scarr’d the moon with splinters: here I clip
The anvil of my sword, and do contest
As hotly and as nobly with thy love
As ever in ambitious strength I did
Contend against thy valour. Know thou first,
I loved the maid I married; never man
Sigh’d truer breath; but that I see thee here,
Thou noble thing! more dances my rapt heart
Than when I first my wedded mistress saw
Bestride my threshold.”
Coriolanus
“Let them obey that knows not how to rule.”
William Shakespeare
King Henry VI, Part 2
“Let us not burthen our remembrance with a heaviness that’s gone.”
William Shakespeare
The Tempest
“Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
William Shakespeare
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let’s choose executors and talk of wills”
Richard II
“Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.”
William Shakespeare
Troilus and Cressida
“Life is better life past fearing death,
William Shakespeare
Than that which lives to fear.”
Measure for Measure
“Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile; So ere you find where light in darkness lies, Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“Like madness is the glory of this life.”
William Shakespeare
Timon of Athens
“Lips, let sour words go by and language end:
William Shakespeare
What is amiss plague and infection mend!
Graves only be men’s works and death their gain!
Sun, hide thy beams! Timon hath done his reign.”
Timon of Athens
“Listen to many, speak to a few.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“Look like the innocent flower,
William Shakespeare
But be the serpent under it.”
Macbeth
“Love all, trust a few,
William Shakespeare
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend
Under thy own life’s key: be checked for silence,
But never taxed for speech.”
All’s Well That Ends Well
“Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books,
William Shakespeare
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.”
Romeo and Juliet
“Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but love.”
William Shakespeare
Love’s Labour’s Lost
“Love is a spirit all compact of fire, Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire.”
William Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis
“Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is!”
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
“Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.”
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
“Love is your master, for he masters you;
William Shakespeare
And he that is so yoked by a fool,
Methinks, should not be chronicled for wise.”
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
“Love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues
William Shakespeare
Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.”
The Merry Wives of Windsor
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love’s mind of any judgment taste; Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: And therefore is love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.”
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“Love moderately. Long love doth so.
William Shakespeare
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
Love each other in moderation. That is the key to long-lasting love. Too fast is as bad as too slow.”
Romeo and Juliet
“Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.”
William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night
“Love takes the meaning in love’s conference.”
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee…”
William Shakespeare
Henry VIII
“Love’s stories written in love’s richest books.
William Shakespeare
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“Macbeth is a play that points to the advent, much like the turbulent last century of the Middle Ages, of a modern age gradually deracinated from its Christian grounding and increasingly enamored of a neopagan notion of virtue, of potentially infinite human achievement severed from metaphysical considerations.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“May never glorious sun reflex his beams upon the country where you make abode: But darkness and the gloomy shade of death Environ you, till mischief and despair Drive you to break your necks or hang yourselves!”
William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part 1
“Me rather had my heart might feel your love
William Shakespeare
Than my unpleased eye see your curtesy.”
Richard II
“Me, poor man, my library
William Shakespeare
Was dukedom large enough.”
The Tempest
“Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.”
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
“Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
“Men in rage strike those that wish them best.”
William Shakespeare
Othello
“Men must learn now with pity to dispense;
William Shakespeare
For policy sits above conscience.”
Timon of Athens
“Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.”
William Shakespeare
Henry VIII
“Merely, thou art death’s fool,
William Shakespeare
For him thou labor’st by thy flight to shun,
And yet run’st toward him still.”
Measure for Measure
“Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more!
William Shakespeare
Macbeth does murder sleep, – the innocent sleep;
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
Macbeth
“Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead,
William Shakespeare
excessive grief the enemy to the living.”
All’s Well That Ends Well
“Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.”
William Shakespeare
Troilus and Cressida
“More of your conversation would infect my brain.”
William Shakespeare
Coriolanus
“Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.”
William Shakespeare
Measure for Measure
“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
William Shakespeare
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.”
Romeo and Juliet
“My brain I’ll prove the female to my soul; my soul the father: and these two beget a generation of still-breeding thoughts, and these same thoughts people this little world.”
William Shakespeare
Richard II
“My Crown is in my heart, not on my head:
William Shakespeare
Not deck’d with Diamonds, and Indian stones:
Nor to be seen: my Crown is call’d Content,
A Crown it is, that seldom Kings enjoy.”
King Henry VI, Part 3
“My drops of tears I’ll turn to sparks of fire.”
William Shakespeare
Henry VIII
“My grief lies all within; and these external manner of laments are merely shadows of the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortured soul.”
William Shakespeare
Richard II
“My hands are of your color, but I shame to wear a heart so white.” (William Shakespeare Quotes)
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr’d; And I myself see not the bottom of it.”
William Shakespeare
Troilus and Cressida
“My particular grief is of so flood-gate and overbearing nature that it engluts and swallows other sorrows, And it is still itself.”
William Shakespeare
Othello
“My poor body, madam, requires it: I am driven on by the flesh; and he must needs go that the devil drives.”
William Shakespeare
All’s Well That Ends Well
“My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
William Shakespeare
Shakes so my single state of man
That function is smothered in surmise,
And nothing is but what is not.”
Macbeth
“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.”
William Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew
“Never durst a poet touch a pen to write
William Shakespeare
Until his ink was tempered with love’s sighs.”
Love’s Labour’s Lost
“No deeper wrinkles yet?
William Shakespeare
Hath sorrow struck
So many blows upon this face of mine
And made no deeper wounds?”
Richard II
“No hope, but death, to bury up our shame.”
William Shakespeare
King Edward III
“No legacy is so rich as honesty.”
William Shakespeare
All’s Well That Ends Well
“No more; unless the next word that thou speak’st
William Shakespeare
Have some malignant power upon my life:
If so, I pray thee breathe it in mine ear,
As ending anthem of my endless dolour.”
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
“No profit grows where is no pleasure taken.
William Shakespeare
In brief, sir, study what you most affect.”
The Taming of the Shrew
“No, no, I am but shadow of myself:
William Shakespeare
You are deceived, my substance is not here;”
Henry VI, Part 1
“Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound reverbs no hollowness.”
William Shakespeare
King Lear
“Nor shall not be the last; like silly beggars
William Shakespeare
Who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame,
That many have and others must sit there;
And in this thought they find a kind of ease”
Richard II
“Nor shall this peace sleep with her; but as when
William Shakespeare
The bird of wonder dies, the maiden phoenix,
Her ashes new-create another heir
As great in admiration as herself.”
Henry VIII
“Not a whit, we defy augury: there’s a special
William Shakespeare
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all.”
Hamlet
“Not all the water in the rough rude sea
William Shakespeare
Can wash the balm from an anointed King;”
Richard II
“Not proud you have, but thankful that you have. Proud can I never be of what I hate, but thankful even for hate that is meant love.”
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
“Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.”
William Shakespeare
King Lear
“Nothing, but our undertakings; when we vow to weep
William Shakespeare
seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers; thinking
it harder for our mistress to devise imposition
enough than for us to undergo any difficulty imposed.
This is the monstruosity in love, lady, that the will
is infinite and the execution confined, that the
desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit.”
Troilus and Cressida
“Notwithstanding the prevalent notion that the French poets are the sympathetic heirs of classic culture, it appears to me that they are not so imbued with the true classic spirit, art, and mythology as some of our English poets, notably Keats and Shelley.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“Now could thou and I rob the thieves and go merrily to London, it would be argument for a week, laughter for a month, and a good jest forever.”
William Shakespeare
King Henry IV, Part 1
“Now go with me and with this holy man
William Shakespeare
Into the chantry by: there, before him,
And underneath that consecrated roof,
Plight me the full assurance of your faith.”
Twelfth Night
“Now he’ll outstare the lighting. To be furious
William Shakespeare
Is to be frightened out of fear, and in that mood
The dove will peck the estridge; and I see still
A diminution in our captain’s brain
Restores his heart. When valor preys on reason,
It eats the sword it fights with.”
Antony and Cleopatra
“Now is the winter of our discontent
William Shakespeare
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”
Richard III
“Now my soul’s palace is become a prison;
William Shakespeare
Ah, would she break from hence, that this my body
Might in the ground be closed up in rest!
For never henceforth shall I joy again,
Never, O never, shall I see more joy!”
King Henry VI, Part 3
“O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies
William Shakespeare
In the small orb of one particular tear!
But with the inundation of the eyes
What rocky heart to water will not wear?”
A Lover’s Complaint
“O God! that one might read the book of fate,
William Shakespeare
And see the revolution of the times
Make mountains level, and the continent,
Weary of solid firmness, melt itself
Into the sea! and, other times, to see
The beachy girdle of the ocean
Too wide for Neptune’s hips; how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors!”
Henry IV, Part 2
“O hard-believing love, how strange it seems!
William Shakespeare
Not to believe, and yet too credulous:
Thy weal and woe are both of them extremes;
Despair and hope make thee ridiculous:
The one doth flatter thee in thoughts unlikely,
In likely thoughts the other kills thee quickly.”
Venus and Adonis
“O my good lord, the world is but a word:
William Shakespeare
Were it all yours to give it in a breath,
How quickly were it gone!”
Timon of Athens
“O sleep, O gentle sleep, Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frightened thee. That thou no more will weigh my eyelids down, And steep my senses in forgetfulness?”
William Shakespeare
Henry IV, Part 2
“O time, thou must untangle this, not I.
William Shakespeare
It is too hard a knot for me t’untie.”
Twelfth Night
“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
William Shakespeare
It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. That cuckold lives in bliss,
Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger:
But O, what damned minutes tells he o’er
Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!”
Othello
“O, grief hath changed me since you saw me last,
William Shakespeare
And careful hours with Time’s deformed hand
Have written strange defeatures in my face.
But tell me yet, dost thou not know my voice?”
The Comedy of Errors
“O, learn to love, the lesson is but plain, And once made perfect, never lost again.”
William Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis
“O, let us pay the time but needful woe,
William Shakespeare
Since it hath been beforehand with our griefs.
This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror
But when it first did help to wound itself.
Now these her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue
If England to itself do rest but true.”
King John
“O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
William Shakespeare
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomi
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.”
Romeo and Juliet
“O, while you live, tell truth, and shame the Devil!” (William Shakespeare Quotes)
William Shakespeare
King Henry IV, Part 1
“O, why should wrath be mute, and fury dumb?
William Shakespeare
I am no baby, I, that with base prayers
I should repent the evils I have done:
Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did
Would I perform, if I might have my will;
If one good deed in all my life I did,
I do repent it from my very soul.”
Titus Andronicus
“On this side my hand, and on that side yours.
William Shakespeare
Now is this golden crown like a deep well
That owes two buckets, filling one another,
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen and full of water:
That bucket down and full of tears am I,
Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.”
Richard II
“One fire burns out another’s burning,
William Shakespeare
One pain is lessened by another’s anguish.”
Romeo and Juliet
“One half of me is yours, the other half is yours,
William Shakespeare
Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours.”
The Merchant of Venice
“One sweet kiss shall pay this countless debt.”
William Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis
“Opinion’s but a fool, that makes us scan the outward habit by the inward man.”
William Shakespeare
Pericles
“Our doubts are traitors,
William Shakespeare
and make us lose the good we oft might win,
by fearing to attempt.”
Measure for Measure
“Our drums strike nothing but discouragement,
William Shakespeare
Our trumpets sound dishonor and retire;
The spirit of fear, that feareth nought but death,
Cowardly works confusion on it self.
Charles ”
King Edward III
“Our reasons are not prophets
William Shakespeare
When oft our fancies are.”
The Two Noble Kinsmen
“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
William Shakespeare
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
The Tempest
“Our wills and fates do so contrary run, that our devices still are overthrown; our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“Pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any true decision.”
William Shakespeare
Troilus and Cressida
“Presume not that I am the thing I was;
William Shakespeare
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turned away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.”
Henry IV, Part 2
“Proper deformity shows not in the fiend
William Shakespeare
So horrid as in woman.”
King Lear
“Prophet may you be!
William Shakespeare
If I be false, or swerve a hair from truth,
when time is old and hath forgot itself,
when waterdrops have worn the stones of Troy,
and blind oblivion swallowed cities up,
and mighty states characterless are grated
to dusty nothing, yet let memory,
from false to false, among false maids in love,
upbraid my falsehood!”
Troilus and Cressida
“Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving. You have lost no reputation at all unless you repute yourself such a loser.”
William Shakespeare
Othello
“Return of love, more blest may be the view;
William Shakespeare
As call it winter, which being full of care,
Makes summer’s welcome thrice more wish’d, more rare.”
The Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint
“Rude am I in my speech, And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace.”
William Shakespeare
Othello
“Rumour is a pipe
William Shakespeare
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures
And of so easy and so plain a stop
That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wavering multitude,
Can play upon it.”
Henry IV, Part 2
“See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.
William Shakespeare
O, that I was a glove upon that hand
That I might touch that cheek!”
Romeo and Juliet
“She dreams of him that has forgot her love;
William Shakespeare
You dote on her that cares not for your love.
‘Tis pity love should be so contrary;
And thinking of it makes me cry ‘alas!”
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
“She gave me for my pains a world of sighs.”
William Shakespeare
Othello
“She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I loved her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have used.”
William Shakespeare
Othello
“She never told her love, but let concealment, like a worm ‘i th’ bud, feed on her damask cheek. She pinned in thought; and, with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? We men may say more, swear more; but indeed our shows are more than will; for we still prove much in our vows but little in our love.”
William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night
“She’s Love, she loves, and yet she is not lov’d.”
William Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis
“She’s beautiful, and therefore to be wooed; She is a woman, therefore to be won.”
William Shakespeare
Henry VI, Part 1
“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more.
William Shakespeare
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into hey nonny, nonny.
Sing no more ditties, sing no more
Of dumps so dull and heavy.
The fraud of men was ever so
Since summer first was leafy.
Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into hey, nonny, nonny.”
Much Ado About Nothing
“Sir, I am a true laborer; I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness; glad of other men’s good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“Sit by my side, and let the world slip: we shall never be younger.”
William Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew
“Sleep kill those pretty eyes, and give as soft attachment to thy senses As infants’ empty of all thought!”
William Shakespeare
Troilus and Cressida
“So farewell to the little good you bear me
William Shakespeare
Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness!”
Henry VIII
“So will I turn her virtue into pitch,
William Shakespeare
And out of her own goodness make the net
That shall enmesh them all.”
Othello
“So wise so young, they say, do never live long.”
William Shakespeare
Richard III
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. Your fate awaits you. Accept it in body and spirit. To get used to the life you’ll most likely be leading soon, get rid of your low-class trappings.”
William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night
“Someone steals my good reputation from me, then he really does make me truly poor, and steals something that doesn’t even make him any richer.”
William Shakespeare
Othello
“Sometimes when we are labeled, when we are branded our brand becomes our calling.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“Sound drum and trumpets, and to London all;
William Shakespeare
And more such days and these to us befall!”
Henry IV, Part 2
“Stars hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“Strike up our drums! Pursue the scattered stray.
William Shakespeare
God, and not we, hath safely fought to day.”
Henry IV, Part 2
“Such was the discipline of Elizabeth’s court that any man who struck another within it had his right hand chopped off by the executioner in a most horrible manner.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; The thief doth fear each bush an officer.”
William Shakespeare
King Henry VI, Part 3
“Sweet are the uses of adversity,
William Shakespeare
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
As You Like It
“Sweets to the sweet, farewell! I hoped thou shouldst have been my Hamlet’s wife; I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid, And not have strewed thy grave.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“Take but degree away, untune that string,
William Shakespeare
And, hark, what discord follows!”
Troilus and Cressida
“Tell me, sweet lord, what is ’t that takes from thee
William Shakespeare
Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?
Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth
And start so often when thou sit’st alone?
Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks
And given my treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-eyed musing and curst melancholy?”
King Henry IV, Part 1
“Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty.” (William Shakespeare Quotes)
William Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis
“That a woman conceived me, I thank her; that she brought me up, I likewise give her most humble thanks. But that I will have a recheat winded in my forehead or hang my bugle in an invisible baldrick, all women shall pardon me. Because I will not do them the wrong to mistrust any, I will do myself the right to trust none. And the fine is, for the which I may go the finer, I will live a bachelor.”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
“That in the captain’s but a choleric word,
William Shakespeare
Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.”
Measure for Measure
“That man that hath a tongue, I say is no man, if with his tongue he cannot win a woman.”
William Shakespeare
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
“That sport best pleases that doth least know how, where zeal strives to content, and the contents dies in the zeal of that which it presents. Their form confounded makes most form in mirth when great things laboring perish in their birth.”
William Shakespeare
Love’s Labour’s Lost
“That such a slave as this should wear a sword,
William Shakespeare
Who wears no honesty. Such smiling rogues as these,
Like rats, oft bite the holy cords atwain
Which are too intrinse t’ unloose; smooth every passion
That in the natures of their lords rebel,
Being oil to the fire, snow to the colder moods,
Renege, affirm, and turn their halcyon beaks
With every gale and vary of their masters
Knowing naught, like dogs, but following.”
King Lear
“The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, Burned on the water; the poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggared all description.”
William Shakespeare
Antony and Cleopatra
“The best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are no worse if imagination amend them.”
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“The breaking of so great a thing should make
William Shakespeare
A greater crack: the round world
Should have shook lions into civil streets,
And citizens to their dens.”
Antony and Cleopatra
“The Brightness of her cheek would shame those stars as daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven would through the airy region stream so bright that birds would sing, and think it were not night.”
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
“The commonwealth is sick of their own choice;
William Shakespeare
Their over-greedy love has surfeited.
An habitation giddy and unsure
Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.”
Henry IV, Part 2
“The devil a puritan that he is, or anything, constantly, but a time-pleaser, an affectioned ass that cons state without book and utters it by great swathes; the best persuaded of himself, so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him – and on that vice in him will my revenge find notable cause to work.”
William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night
“The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.”
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
William Shakespeare
King Henry VI, Part 2
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
“The implacable logic of retribution will prove as appalling as the crime itself, consisting of the soul’s slow agonizing descent into a state of such loneliness and despair as to be finally indistinguishable from Hell.”
“The love of wicked friends converts to fear;
William Shakespeare
That fear to hate; and hate turns one or both
To worthy danger and deserved death.”
Richard II
“The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“The malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours. Therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone.”
William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night
“The moon’s an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.”
William Shakespeare
Timon of Athens
“The native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought; and enterprises of great pitch and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“The proud insulting queen,
William Shakespeare
With Clifford and the haught Northumberland,
And of their feather many more proud birds,
Have wrought the easy-melting king like wax.”
King Henry VI, Part 3
“The purple violets and marigolds
William Shakespeare
Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave
While summer days doth last. Ay me, poor maid,
Born in a tempest when my mother died,
This world to me is as a lasting storm”
Pericles
“The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief; He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.”
William Shakespeare
Othello
“The seasons’ difference, as the icy fang And churlish chiding of the winter’s wind, Which when it bites and blows upon my body Even till I shrink with cold, I smile and say, “This is no flattery: these are counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“The shadow of my sorrow. Let’s see, ’tis very true. My griefs lie all within and these external manners of laments are mere shadows to the unseen grief which swells with silence in the tortured soul.
William Shakespeare
There lies the substance.”
Richard II
“The sweat of industry would dry and die, But for the end it works to.”
William Shakespeare
Cymbeline
“The sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness. And in the taste destroys the appetite. Therefore, love moderately.”
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
“The truest poetry is the most feigning”
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
“The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness
William Shakespeare
And time to speak it in. You rub the sore
When you should bring the plaster.”
The Tempest
“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.”
William Shakespeare
All’s Well That Ends Well
“The weight of this sad time we must obey,
William Shakespeare
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.”
King Lear
“The wildest hath not such a heart as you.
William Shakespeare
Run when you will, the story shall be changed:
Apollo flies, and Daphne holds the chase;
The dove pursues the griffin; the mild hind
Makes speed to catch the tiger; bootless speed,
When cowardice pursues and valour flies.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law.”
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
“Their manners are more gentle, kind, than of our generation you shall find.”
William Shakespeare
The Tempest
“There are many events in the womb of time which will be delivered.”
William Shakespeare
Othello
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“There are no faces truer than those that are so washed. How much better is it to weep at joy than to joy at weeping!”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
“There is no measure in the occasion that breeds;
William Shakespeare
therefore the sadness is without limit.”
Much Ado About Nothing
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
William Shakespeare
Would men observingly distill it out.”
Henry V
“There is thy gold, worse poison to men’s souls,
William Shakespeare
Doing more murder in this loathsome world,
Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell.”
Romeo and Juliet
“There’s daggers in men’s smiles. The near in blood, The nearer bloody.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones;
William Shakespeare
Who, though they cannot answer my distress,
Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes,
For that they will not intercept my tale:
When I do weep, they humbly at my feet
Receive my tears and seem to weep with me;
And, were they but attired in grave weeds,
Rome could afford no tribune like to these.”
Titus Andronicus
“There’s a great spirit gone! Thus did I desire it.
William Shakespeare
What our contempts doth often hurl from us,
We wish it ours again. The present pleasure,
By revolution lowering, does become
The opposite of itself. She’s good, being gone.
The hand could pluck her back that shoved her on.”
Antony and Cleopatra
“There’s little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps; and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamt of unhappiness, and waked herself with laughing.” (William Shakespeare Quotes)
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
“There’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple.
William Shakespeare
If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
Good things will strive to dwell with’t”
The Tempest
“There’s nothing in this world can make me joy.
William Shakespeare
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man;
And bitter shame hath spoiled the sweet world’s taste,
That it yields nought but shame and bitterness.”
King John
“There’s nothing serious in mortality;
William Shakespeare
All is but toys; renown, and grace, is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.”
Macbeth
“There’s small choice in rotten apples.”
William Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew
“There’s some ill planet reigns:
William Shakespeare
I must be patient till the heavens look
With an aspect more favourable. Good my lords,
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities: but I have
That honorable grief lodged here which burns
Worse than tears drown: beseech you all, my lords,
With thoughts so qualified as your charities
Shall best instruct you, measure me; and so
The king’s will be performed!”
The Winter’s Tale
“These signs have marked me extraordinary;
William Shakespeare
And all the courses of my life do show
I am not in the roll of common men.”
King Henry IV, Part 1
“These sudden joys have sudden endings. They burn up in victory like fire and gunpowder.
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
“These violent delights have violent ends
William Shakespeare
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite.
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.”
Romeo and Juliet
“They are but beggars that can count their worth; But my true love is grown to such excess I cannot sum up half of my wealth.”
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
“They do not love that do not show their love.”
William Shakespeare
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
“They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.”
William Shakespeare
Love’s Labour’s Lost
“They lie deadly that tell you have good faces.”
William Shakespeare
Coriolanus
“They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.”
William Shakespeare
All’s Well That Ends Well
“They surfeited with honey and began
William Shakespeare
To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little
More than a little is by much too much.”
King Henry IV, Part 1
“Thine face is not worth sunburning.”
William Shakespeare
Henry V
“Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
William Shakespeare
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“Things growing to themselves are growth’s abuse: Seeds spring from seeds and beauty breedeth beauty”
William Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis
“Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour.”
William Shakespeare
Richard II
“Things without all remedy should be without regard: what’s done is done.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“This above all: to thine own self be true,
William Shakespeare
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
Hamlet
“This better to be vile than vile esteemed
William Shakespeare
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed
Not by our feeling but by others’ seeing.
For why should others’ false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad that I think good?
No, I am that I am; and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own:
I may be straight though they themselves be bevel;
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown,
Unless this general evil they maintain:
All men are bad and in their badness reign.”
The Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint
“This hand shall never more come near thee with such friendship”
William Shakespeare
The Two Noble Kinsmen
“This is in thee a nature but infected;
William Shakespeare
A poor unmanly melancholy sprung
From change of fortune. Why this spade? this place?
This slave-like habit? and these looks of care?
Thy flatterers yet wear silk, drink wine, lie soft;
Hug their diseased perfumes, and have forgot
That ever Timon was. Shame not these woods,
By putting on the cunning of a carper.
Be thou a flatterer now, and seek to thrive
By that which has undone thee: hinge thy knee,
And let his very breath, whom thou’lt observe,
Blow off thy cap; praise his most vicious strain,
And call it excellent: thou wast told thus;
Thou gavest thine ears like tapsters that bid welcome
To knaves and all approachers: ’tis most just
That thou turn rascal; hardest thou wealth again,
Rascals should have ‘t. Do not assume my likeness.”
Timon of Athens
“This is the very ecstasy of love,
William Shakespeare
Whose violent property fordoes itself
And leads the will to desperate undertakings
As oft as any passion under heaven
That does afflict our natures.
Hamlet
“This late dissension grown betwixt the peers
William Shakespeare
Burns under feigned ashes of forged love,
And will at last break out into a flame:
As festered members rot but by degree,
Till bones and flesh and sinews fall away,
So will this base and envious discord breed.”
Henry VI, Part 1
“This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven.”
William Shakespeare
Othello
“This world’s a city full of straying streets, and death’s the market-place where each one meets.”
William Shakespeare
The Two Noble Kinsmen
“Those lips that Love’s own hand did make
William Shakespeare
Breathed forth the sound that said, ‘I hate’
To me that languished for her sake,
But, when she saw my woeful state,
Straight in her heart did mercy come,
Chiding that tongue that ever sweet
Was used in giving gentle doom,
And taught it thus anew to greet:
‘I hate,’ she altered with an end
That followed it as gentle day
Doth follow night, who like a fiend
From Heaven to Hell is flown away.
‘I hate’ from hate away she threw
And saved my life, saying ‘not you’.”
The Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint
“Those palates who, not yet two summers younger, must have inventions to delight the taste, would now be glad of bread, and beg for it.”
William Shakespeare
Pericles
“Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare, forked animal as thou art.”
William Shakespeare
King Lear
“Though I am not naturally honest, I am sometimes so by chance.”
William Shakespeare
The Winter’s Tale
“Though she be but little, she is fierce!”
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“Thrice to thine and thrice to mine and thrice again, to make up nine.
William Shakespeare
Peace! The charm’s wound up.”
Macbeth
“Through his mane and tail the high wind sings, fanning the hairs, who wave like feather’d wings.”
William Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis
“Thus I clothe my naked villainy with old odd ends, stolen forth of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil.”
William Shakespeare
Richard III
“Thus play I in one person many people,
William Shakespeare
And none contented: sometimes am I king;
Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,
And so I am: then crushing penury
Persuades me I was better when a king;
Then am I king’d again: and by and by
Think that I am unking’d by Bolingbroke,
And straight am nothing: but whate’er I be,
Nor I nor any man that but man is
With nothing shall be pleased, till he be eased
With being nothing.”
Richard II
“Thy best of rest is sleep,
William Shakespeare
And that thou oft provok’st; yet grossly fear’st
Thy death, which is no more.”
Measure for Measure
“Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold. Thou hast no speculation in those eyes Which thou dost glare with!”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
William Shakespeare
Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance; commits his body
To painful labor, both by sea and land;
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou list warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks, and true obedience-
Too little payment for so great a debt.
Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And no obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel,
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I ashamed that women are so simple
‘To offer war where they should kneel for peace,
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,
When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.
Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions, and our hearts,
Should well agree with our external parts?”
The Taming of the Shrew
“Till then I’ll sweat and seek about for eases,
William Shakespeare
And at that time bequeath you my diseases.”
Troilus and Cressida
“Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides:
William Shakespeare
Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.”
King Lear
“Time travels at different speeds for different people. I can tell you who time strolls for, who it trots for, who it gallops for, and who it stops cold for.”
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
“Tis in ourselves that we are thus
William Shakespeare
or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which
our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant
nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up
thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or
distract it with many, either to have it sterile
with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the
power and corrigible authority of this lies in our
wills. If the balance of our lives had not one
scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the
blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us
to most preposterous conclusions: but we have
reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal
stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I take this that
you call love to be a sect or scion.”
Othello
“Tis safter to be that which we destroy
William Shakespeare
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.”
Macbeth
“Tis ten to one this play can never please
William Shakespeare
All that are here. Some come to take their ease
And sleep an act or two; but those, we fear,
W’ have frighted with our trumpets.” (William Shakespeare Quotes)
Henry VIII
“To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature.”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
“To be poor but content is actually to be quite rich. But you can have endless riches and still be as poor as anyone if you are always afraid of losing your riches.”
William Shakespeare
Othello
“To beguile the time, look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“To die is to be a counterfeit, for he is but the counterfeit of a man who hath not the life of a man; but to counterfeit dying when a man thereby liveth is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeed.”
William Shakespeare
King Henry IV, Part 1
“To die, – To sleep, – To sleep!
William Shakespeare
Perchance to dream: – ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;”
Hamlet
“To die, is to be banished from myself;
William Shakespeare
And Silvia is myself: banished from her,
Is self from self: a deadly banishment!
What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?
What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by?
Unless it be to think that she is by,
And feed upon the shadow of perfection.
Except I be by Silvia in the night,
There is no music in the nightingale;
Unless I look on Silvia in the day,
There is no day for me to look upon;
She is my essence, and I leave to be,
If I be not by her fair influence
Fostered, illumined, cherished, kept alive.”
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
“To every place at once, and, nowhere fixt, The mind and sight distractedly commixt.”
William Shakespeare
A Lover’s Complaint
“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
William Shakespeare
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
Macbeth
“True, I talk of dreams,
William Shakespeare
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air,
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being angered, puffs away from thence,
Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.”
Romeo and Juliet
“Truly thou art damned, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side.”
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
“Turn him into stars and form a constellation in his image. His face will make the heavens so beautiful that the world will fall in love with the night and forget about the garish sun.”
William Shakespeare
Romeo and Juliet
“Until I know this sure uncertainty,
William Shakespeare
I’ll entertain the offered fallacy.”
The Comedy of Errors
“Up and down, up and down
William Shakespeare
I will lead them up and down
I am feared in field in town
Goblin, lead them up and down”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“Upon my tongues continual slanders ride,
William Shakespeare
The which in every language I pronounce,
Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.”
Henry IV, Part 2
“Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, Blood and revenge are hammering in my head”
William Shakespeare
Titus Andronicus
“We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.”
William Shakespeare
Henry VIII
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
William Shakespeare
The Tempest
“We came into the world like brother and brother,
William Shakespeare
And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.”
The Comedy of Errors
“We can not blame Shakespeare for making use of cutthroats and villains in developing his plots, but we might have been spared the jokes which the jailors of Posthumus perpetrate when they come to lead him to the scaffold, and the ludicrous English of the clown who supplies Cleopatra with an asp.
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“We find in the characters of the Elizabethan drama not types and qualities, but individuals strongly projected, with all their idiosyncrasies and contradictions. These dramas touch our sympathies at all points, and are representative of human life today, because they reflected the human life of their time.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“We that are true lovers run into strange capers. But as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.”
William Shakespeare
As You Like It
“We, ignorant of ourselves,
William Shakespeare
Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers
Deny us for our good; so find we profit
By losing of our prayers.”
Antony and Cleopatra
“We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside, As many other mannish cowards have That do outface it with their semblances.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“Wear me as a seal over your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, passion cruel as the grave.”
William Shakespeare
Henry V
“Weigh oath with oath, and you will nothing weigh,
William Shakespeare
Your vows to her and me, put in two scales,
Will even weigh, and both as light as tales.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“Well could I curse away a winter’s night,
William Shakespeare
Though standing naked on a mountain top,
Where biting cold would never let grass grow,
And think it but a minute spent in sport.”
King Henry VI, Part 2
“Well, heaven forgive him! and forgive us all!
William Shakespeare
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall:
Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none:
And some condemned for a fault alone.”
Measure for Measure
“What a piece of work is a man! How noble in Reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor Woman neither; though by your smiling you seem to say so.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“What a terrible era in which idiots govern the blind.”
William Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
“What canst thou promise that I cannot break?
William Shakespeare
Which of these twain is greater infamy,
To disobey thy father or thy self?
Thy word, nor no mans, may exceed his power;
Nor that same man doth never break his word,
That keeps it to the utmost of his power.
The breach of faith dwells in the soul’s consent:
Which if thy self without consent do break.
King John”
King Edward III
“What I can do can do no hurt to try, Since you set up your rest ‘gainst remedy. He that of greatest works is finisher Oft does them by the weakest minister: So holy writ in babes hath judgment shown, When judges have been babes; great floods have flown From simple sources, and great seas have dried When miracles have by the greatest been denied. Oft expectation fails and most oft there Where most it promises, and oft it hits Where hope is coldest and despair most fits.”
William Shakespeare
All’s Well That Ends Well
“What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“What is honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No.”
William Shakespeare
King Henry IV, Part 1
“What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
William Shakespeare
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty;
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.”
Twelfth Night
“What need the bridge much broader than the flood? The fairest grant is the necessity.”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
“What piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“What presence must not know,
William Shakespeare
From where you do remain let paper show.”
Richard II
“What relish is in this? How runs the stream?
William Shakespeare
Or I am mad, or else this is a dream.
Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep.
If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!”
Twelfth Night
“What would you have? Your gentleness shall force
William Shakespeare
More than your force move us to gentleness.”
As You Like It
“What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyes
William Shakespeare
Would, with themselves, shut up my thoughts…”
The Tempest
“What’s done cannot be undone.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“When devils do the worst sins, they first put on the pretense of goodness and innocence, as I am doing now.”
William Shakespeare
Othello
“When Elizabeth was old and had a wrinkled face and black teeth, she was one day discovered practicing the dance step alone, to the sound of a fiddle, determined to keep up to the last the limberness and agility necessary to impress foreign ambassadors with her grace and youth.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it; the basest horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.”
William Shakespeare
Henry V
“When I burned in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I was married.”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
“When my love swears that she is made of truth,
William Shakespeare
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearnèd in the world’s false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
Oh, love’s best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.”
The Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint
“When night-dogs run, all sorts of deer are chased.”
William Shakespeare
The Merry Wives of Windsor
“When remedies are past, the griefs are ended
William Shakespeare
By seeing the worst, which late on hopes depended.
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone
Is the next way to draw new mischief on.
What cannot be preserved when fortune takes,
Patience her injury a mockery makes.
The robbed that smiles steals something for the thief;
He robs himself that spends a bootless grief.”
Othello
“When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning, or in rain?”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“When valor preys on reason,
William Shakespeare
it eats the sword it fights with.”
Antony and Cleopatra
“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.” (William Shakespeare Quotes)
William Shakespeare
King Lear
“When you depart from me sorrow abides and happiness takes his leave.”
William Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
“Where shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly ‘s done, when the battle ‘s lost and won”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
William Shakespeare
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?”
Hamlet
“Whiles I in Ireland nourish a mighty band, I will stir up in England some black storm Shall blow ten thousand souls to heaven or hell; And this fell tempest shall not cease to rage Until the golden circuit on my head, Like to the glorious sun’s transparent beams, Do calm the fury of this mad-bred flaw.”
William Shakespeare
King Henry VI, Part 2
“Whiles others fish with craft for great opinion, I with great truth catch mere simplicity; Whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns, With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare.”
William Shakespeare
Troilus and Cressida
“Who could refrain,
William Shakespeare
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make love known?”
Macbeth
“Who has a book of all that monarchs do,
William Shakespeare
He’s more secure to keep it shut than shown.”
Pericles
“Who lives that’s not depraved or depraves?
William Shakespeare
Who dies, that bears not one spurn to their graves
Of their friends’ gift?
I should fear those that dance before me now
Would one day stamp upon me: ‘t has been done;
Men shut their doors against a setting sun.”
Timon of Athens
“Who sees his true-love in her naked bed,
William Shakespeare
Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white,
But when his glutton eye so full hath fed,
His other agents aim at like delight?
Who is so faint that dare not be so bold
To touch the fire, the weather being cold?”
Venus and Adonis
“Who will believe thee, Isabel?
William Shakespeare
My unsoiled name, the austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my place i’ the state
Will so your accusation overweigh
That you shall stifle in your own report
And smell of calumny. I have begun; And now I give my sensual race the rein.
Fit thy consent to my sharp appetite…”
Measure for Measure
“Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth
William Shakespeare
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?”
The Taming of the Shrew
“Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
William Shakespeare
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness, serious vanity,
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.”
Romeo and Juliet
“Why, I can smile and murder whiles I smile,
William Shakespeare
And cry ‘content’ to that which grieves my heart,
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face for all occasions”
King Henry VI, Part 3
“Why, then the world ’s mine oyster,
William Shakespeare
Which I with sword will open.”
The Merry Wives of Windsor
“Why, this is the world’s soul; and just of the
William Shakespeare
same piece
Is every flatterer’s spirit. Who can call him
His friend that dips in the same dish? for, in
My knowing, Timon has been this lord’s father,
And kept his credit with his purse,
Supported his estate; nay, Timon’s money
Has paid his men their wages: he ne’er drinks,
But Timon’s silver treads upon his lip;
And yet — O, see the monstrousness of man
When he looks out in an ungrateful shape!—
He does deny him, in respect of his,
What charitable men afford to beggars.”
Timon of Athens
“Why, thou knowest I am as valiant as Hercules, but beware instinct. The lion will not touch the true prince. Instinct is a great matter. I was a coward on instinct.”
William Shakespeare
King Henry IV, Part 1
“Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.”
William Shakespeare
Macbeth
“Will you stay no longer? nor will you not that I go with you?
William Shakespeare
Sebastian: By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me; the malignancy of my fate might, perhaps, distemper yours; therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you.”
Twelfth Night
“Would I were dead, if God’s good will were so;
William Shakespeare
For what is in this world but grief and woe?”
King Henry VI, Part 3
“Yes, and shall do till the pangs of death shake him. Infirmity, that decays the wise, doth ever make the better fool.”
William Shakespeare
Twelfth Night
“You and you are sure together,
William Shakespeare
As the winter to foul weather.”
As You Like It
“You are not worth the dust which the rude wind blows in your face”
William Shakespeare
King Lear
“You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.”
William Shakespeare
Hamlet
“You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
William Shakespeare
As reek o’ the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with your uncertainty!”
Coriolanus
“You do amaze her: hear the truth of it.
William Shakespeare
You would have married her most shamefully,
Where there was no proportion held in love.
The truth is, she and I, long since contracted,
Are now so sure that nothing can dissolve us.
The offence is holy that she hath committed;
And this deceit loses the name of craft,
Of disobedience, or unduteous title,
Since therein she doth evitate and shun
A thousand irreligious cursed hours,
Which forced marriage would have brought upon her.”
The Merry Wives of Windsor
“You have her father’s love, Demetrius, Let me have Hermia’s; do you marry him.”
William Shakespeare
The Complete Works
“You have witchcraft in your lips, there is more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the tongues of the French council; and they should sooner persuade Harry of England than a general petition of monarchs.”
William Shakespeare
Henry V
“You may my glories and my state depose,
William Shakespeare
But not my griefs; still am I king of those.”
Richard II
“You may wear her in title yours: but, you know, strange fowl light upon neighboring ponds.”
William Shakespeare
Cymbeline
“You pay a great deal too dear for what’s given freely.”
William Shakespeare
The Winter’s Tale
“You tread upon my patience: but be sure I will from henceforth rather be myself, Mighty and to be feared, than my condition, Which hath been smooth as oil, soft as young down, And therefore lost that title of respect Which the proud soul ne’er pays but to the proud.”
William Shakespeare
King Henry IV, Part 1
“You were used to say extremity was the trier of spirits; that common chances common men could bear; that when the sea was calm all boats alike showed mastership in floating”
William Shakespeare
Coriolanus
Read more Author Quotes like this
