Shakespeare's Quotes

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

Love all, trust a few, 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 check'd for silence, But never tax'd for speech.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing'd 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 beguil'd.

Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.

Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.

When he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.

We know what we are, but not what we may be.

All the world's a stage, 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.

You speak an infinite deal of nothing.

Words are easy, like the wind; faithful friends are hard to find.

Though she be but little, she is fierce!

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.

By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.

Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.

Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.

I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it.

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

These violent delights have violent ends 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.

Don't waste your love on somebody, who doesn't value it.

My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love it is to me, That I must love a loathed enemy.

thus with a kiss I die

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

If music be the food of love, play on; 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.

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

All that glisters is not gold; Often have you heard that told: Many a man his life hath sold But my outside to behold: Gilded tombs do worms enfold.

Dispute not with her: she is lunatic.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

The course of true love never did run smooth; But, either it was different in blood, O cross! too high to be enthrall’d to low. Or else misgraffed in respect of years, O spite! too old to be engag’d to young. Or else it stood upon the choice of friends, O hell! to choose love by another’s eye.

To die, - To sleep, - To sleep! 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;

Though [Abraham Lincoln] never would travel to Europe, he went with Shakespeare’s kings to Merry England; he went with Lord Byron poetry to Spain and Portugal. Literature allowed him to transcend his surroundings.

Expectation is the root of all heartache.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Listen to many, speak to a few.

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.

Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. then your love would also change.

Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is! (Act 1, scene 1)

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 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.

Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under it.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain; at least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all.

The breaking of so great a thing should make A greater crack: the round world Should have shook lions into civil streets, And citizens to their dens.

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.

They do not love that do not show their love.

I can see he's not in your good books,' said the messenger. 'No, and if he were I would burn my library.

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

Presume not that I am the thing I was; For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turn'd away my former self; So will I those that kept me company.

I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.

Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.

What's done cannot be undone.

In time we hate that which we often fear.

Et tu, Brute?

Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.

What's past is prologue.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

And yet,to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.

What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.

O teach me how I should forget to think (1.1.224)

Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father refuse thy name, thou art thyself thou not a montegue, what is montegue? tis nor hand nor foot nor any other part belonging to a man What is in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, So Romeo would were he not Romeo called retain such dear perfection to which he owes without that title, Romeo, Doth thy name! And for that name which is no part of thee, take all thyself.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.

When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.

I do love nothing in the world so well as you- is not that strange?

When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!

Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak.

Who could refrain, That had a heart to love, and in that heart Courage to make love known?

Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? SAMPSON [Aside to Gregory]: Is the law of our side, if I say ay? GREGORY [Aside to Sampson]: No. SAMPSON: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.

God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another.

My soul is in the sky.

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more. 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.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring barque, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs; Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes; Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears; What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.

Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-browed night; Give me my Romeo; and, when I shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night...

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.

To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: 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; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.--Soft you now! The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd!

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines, And too often is his gold complexion dimm'd: And every fair from fair sometimes declines, By chance or natures changing course untrimm'd; By thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Love is not love which alters it when alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: O no! It is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wandering bark whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out, even to the edge of doom.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, 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.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.

I know that David Tennant's Hamlet isn't till July. And lots of people are going to be doing Dr Who in Hamlet jokes, so this is just me getting it out of the way early, to avoid the rush... "To be, or not to be, that is the question. Weeelll.... More of A question really. Not THE question. Because, well, I mean, there are billions and billions of questions out there, and well, when I say billions, I mean, when you add in the answers, not just the questions, weeelll, you're looking at numbers that are positively astronomical and... for that matter the other question is what you lot are doing on this planet in the first place, and er, did anyone try just pushing this little red button?

O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of divinest show! Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st, A damned saint, an honourable villain! O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell; When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh? Was ever book containing such vile matter So fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell In such a gorgeous palace!

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whole misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

The truth is, everyone likes to look down on someone. If your favorites are all avant-garde writers who throw in Sanskrit and German, you can look down on everyone. If your favorites are all Oprah Book Club books, you can at least look down on mystery readers. Mystery readers have sci-fi readers. Sci-fi can look down on fantasy. And yes, fantasy readers have their own snobbishness. I’ll bet this, though: in a hundred years, people will be writing a lot more dissertations on Harry Potter than on John Updike. Look, Charles Dickens wrote popular fiction. Shakespeare wrote popular fiction—until he wrote his sonnets, desperate to show the literati of his day that he was real artist. Edgar Allan Poe tied himself in knots because no one realized he was a genius. The core of the problem is how we want to define “literature”. The Latin root simply means “letters”. Those letters are either delivered—they connect with an audience—or they don’t. For some, that audience is a few thousand college professors and some critics. For others, its twenty million women desperate for romance in their lives. Those connections happen because the books successfully communicate something real about the human experience. Sure, there are trashy books that do really well, but that’s because there are trashy facets of humanity. What people value in their books—and thus what they count as literature—really tells you more about them than it does about the book.

If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss. 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. Romeo: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too? Juliet: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer. Romeo: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair. Juliet: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake. Romeo: Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged. Juliet: Then have my lips the sin that they have took. Romeo: Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again. Juliet: You kiss by the book.