Shakespeare Love Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Shakespeare Love. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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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.
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William Shakespeare (All's Well That Ends Well)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
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Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.
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William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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Don't waste your love on somebody, who doesn't value it.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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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.
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William Shakespeare
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Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
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Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. then your love would also change.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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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)
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William Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet)
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They do not love that do not show their love.
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William Shakespeare (The Two Gentlemen of Verona)
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I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.
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William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)
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And yet,to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.
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William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
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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.
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William Shakespeare
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I do love nothing in the world so well as you- is not that strange?
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William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)
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Who could refrain, That had a heart to love, and in that heart Courage to make love known?
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William Shakespeare (Macbeth)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (Great Sonnets (Dover Thrift Editions: Poetry))
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See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O, that I were a glove upon that hand That I might touch that cheek!
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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For she had eyes and chose me.
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William Shakespeare (Othello)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
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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...
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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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!
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William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
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For which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?
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William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)
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O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey'd 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 damnèd minutes tells he o'er Who dotes, yet doubts, suspects, yet strongly loves!
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William Shakespeare (Othello)
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If love be rough with you, be rough with love; Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down. Give me a case to put my visage in: A visor for a visor! what care I What curious eye doth quote deformities? Here are the beetle brows shall blush for me.
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William Shakespeare
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I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell, To die upon the hand I love so well.
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William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)
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I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.
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William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)
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I pray you, do not fall in love with me, for I am falser than vows made in wine.
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William Shakespeare (As You Like It)
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If I were to kiss you then go to hell, I would. So then I can brag with the devils I saw heaven without ever entering it.
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William Shakespeare
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in black ink my love may still shine bright.
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William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)
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He made me feel unhinged . . . like he could take me apart and put me back together again and again.
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Chelsie Shakespeare
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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.
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William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
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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!
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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Sometimes...the hardest part about letting someone go is realizing that you were never meant to have them.
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Rebecca Serle (When You Were Mine)
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O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit
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William Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)
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a young woman in love always looks like patience on a monument smiling at grief
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Be patient, Ophelia. Love, Hamlet
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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Thou and I are too wise to woo peaceably.
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William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)
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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 punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.
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William Shakespeare (As You Like It)
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Love comforeth like sunshine after rain, But Lust's effect is tempest after sun. Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain; Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done. Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies; Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.
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William Shakespeare (The Complete Sonnets and Poems)
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Love moderately. Long love doth so. 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.*
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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Love's stories written in love's richest books. To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.
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William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
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Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.
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William Shakespeare (As You Like It)
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Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate! 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.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
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William Shakespeare (King Lear)
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So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet an union in partition, Two lovely berries moulded on one stem.
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William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
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Under love’s heavy burden do I sink. And, to sink in it, should you burden love; Too great oppression for a tender thing. Is love a tender thing? it is too rough, Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn. If love be rough with you, be rough with love; Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet)
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Love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much. Lady, as you are mine, I am yours: I give away myself for you and dote upon the exchange.
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William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)
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The love that follows us sometime is our trouble, which still we thank as love.
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William Shakespeare (Macbeth)
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He would reach for me in the middle of the night, nearly every single night, wrapping one of those solid arms around my waist and pulling me in close. So. Close.
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Chelsie Shakespeare (The Pull)
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I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyesβ€”and moreover, I will go with thee to thy uncle’s.
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William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)
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True love cannot be found where it does not exist, nor can it be denied where it does
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Torquato Tasso
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Love me!... Why?
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William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (Othello)
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Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.
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William Shakespeare (King Henry V)
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Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.
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William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)
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How do you mourn something that never really belonged to you?
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Rebecca Serle (When You Were Mine)
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One half of me is yours, the other half is yours, Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours, And so all yours.
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William Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)
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Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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Banish'd from [those we love] Is self from self: a deadly banishment!
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William Shakespeare (The Two Gentlemen of Verona)
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Out of her favour, where I am in love.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?... 'Swounds, show me what thou'lt do: Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself? Woo't drink up eisel? eat a crocodile? I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine? To outface me with leaping in her grave? Be buried quick with her, and so will I: And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw Millions of acres on us, till our ground, Singeing his pate against the burning zone, Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth, I'll rant as well as thou.
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William Shakespeare
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The sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness. And in the taste destroys the appetite. Therefore, love moderately.
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain and nourish all the world.
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William Shakespeare (Love's Labour's Lost)
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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.
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William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
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My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.
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William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)
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Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul But I do love thee! and when I love thee not, Chaos is come again.
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William Shakespeare (Othello)
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He jests at scars that never felt a wound. But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, Who is already sick and pale with grief, That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she. Be not her maid since she is envious. Her vestal livery is but sick and green, And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off! It is my lady. Oh, it is my love. Oh, that she knew she were! She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that? Her eye discourses. I will answer it.β€” I am too bold. 'Tis not to me she speaks. Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, Having some business, do entreat her eyes To twinkle in their spheres till they return. What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars As daylight doth a lamp. Her eye in heaven Would through the airy region stream so bright That birds would sing and think it were not night. See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand That I might touch that cheek!
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William Shakespeare
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Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.
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William Shakespeare (As You Like It)
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For it falls out That what we have we prize not to the worth Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost, Why, then we rack the value, then we find The virtue that possession would not show us While it was ours.
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William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)
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How does he love me? With adoration, with fertile tears, With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
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William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)
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No sooner met but they looked; no sooner looked but they loved; no sooner loved but they sighed; no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage...
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William Shakespeare (As You Like It)
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Things base and vile, holding no quantity, 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.
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William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
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All I've learned in today's Shakespeare class is: Sometimes you have to fall in love with the wrong person just so you can find the right person. A more useful lesson would've been: Sometimes the right person doesn't love you back. Or sometimes the right person is gay. Or sometimes you just aren't the right person. Thanks for nothing, Shakespeare.
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Jackson Pearce (As You Wish (Genies #1))
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Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none. A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.
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William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)
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Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now; Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross, Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow, And do not drop in for an after-loss: Ah! do not, when my heart hath β€˜scaped this sorrow, Come in the rearward of a conquered woe; Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, To linger out a purposed overthrow. If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last, When other petty griefs have done their spite, But in the onset come: so shall I taste At first the very worst of fortune’s might; And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, Compared with loss of thee, will not seem so.
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William Shakespeare
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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.
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William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)
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Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him; The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones, So let it be with Caesar ... The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answered it ... Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest, (For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all; all honourable men) Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral ... He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man…. He hath brought many captives home to Rome, Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honourable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then to mourn for him? O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason…. Bear with me; My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me
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William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)
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When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. a
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William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)
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Well, in that hit you miss. She'll not be hit With Cupid's arrow. She hath Dian's wit, And, in strong proff of chastity well armed, From Love's weak childish bow she lives uncharmed. She will not stay the siege of loving terms, Nor bide th' encounter of assailing eyes, Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold. O, she is rich in beauty; only poor That, when she dies, with dies her store. Act 1,Scene 1, lines 180-197
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
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Tis in ourselves that we are thus 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.
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William Shakespeare (Othello)
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Claire: Dear Claire, "What" and "If" are two words as non-threatening as words can be. But put them together side-by-side and they have the power to haunt you for the rest of your life: What if? What if? What if? I don't know how your story ended but if what you felt then was true love, then it's never too late. If it was true then, why wouldn't it be true now? You need only the courage to follow your heart. I don't know what a love like Juliet's feels like - love to leave loved ones for, love to cross oceans for but I'd like to believe if I ever were to feel it, that I will have the courage to seize it. And, Claire, if you didn't, I hope one day that you will. All my love, Juliet
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Lise Friedman (Letters to Juliet: Celebrating Shakespeare's Greatest Heroine, the Magical City of Verona, and the Power of Love)
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That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou seest the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must expire Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by. This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
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William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)
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I am clumsy, drop glasses and get drunk on Monday afternoons. I read Seneca and can recite Shakespeare by heart, but I mess up the laundry, don’t answer my phone and blame the world when something goes wrong. I think I have a dream, but most of the days I’m still sleeping. The grass is cut. It smells like strawberries. Today I finished four books and cleaned my drawers. Do you believe in a God? Can I tell you about Icarus? How he flew too close to the sun? I want to make coming home your favourite part of the day. I want to leave tiny little words lingering in your mind, on nights when you’re far away and can’t sleep. I want to make everything around us beautiful; make small things mean a little more. Make you feel a little more. A little better, a little lighter. The coffee is warm, this cup is yours. I want to be someone you can’t live without. I want to be someone you can’t live without.
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Charlotte Eriksson (He loved me some days. I'm sure he did: 99 essays on growth through loss)
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There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts... There’s fennel for you, and columbines; there’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we may call it herb of grace o’ Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference. There’s a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they wither’d all when my father died. They say he made a good end,β€” [Sings.] β€œFor bonny sweet Robin is all my joy. Thought and afflictions, passion, hell itself, She turns to favor and to prettiness. Song. And will a not come again? And will a not come again? No, no, he is dead; Go to thy deathbed; He never will come again. His beard was as white as snow, Flaxen was his poll. He is gone, he is gone, And we cast away moan. God ’a’ mercy on his soul.
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William Shakespeare
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What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by. Richard loves Richard; that is, I and I. Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am. Then fly! What, from myself? Great reason why: Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself? Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good That I myself have done unto myself? O, no! Alas, I rather hate myself For hateful deeds committed by myself. I am a villain. Yet I lie. I am not. Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter: My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain. Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree; Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree; All several sins, all used in each degree, Throng to the bar, crying all, β€œGuilty! guilty!” I shall despair. There is no creature loves me, And if I die no soul will pity me. And wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity to myself?
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William Shakespeare (Richard III)
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Rooney dropped to her knees. β€˜Georgia, I am never going to stop being your friend. And I don’t mean that in the boring average meaning of β€˜friend’ where we stop talking regularly when we’re twenty-five because we’ve both met nice young men and gone off to have babies, and only get to meet up twice a year. I mean I’m going to pester you to buy a house next door to me when we’re forty-five and have finally saved up enough for our deposits. I mean I’m going to be crashing round yours every night for dinner because you know I can’t fucking cook to save my life, and if I’ve got kids and a spouse, they’ll probably come round with me, because otherwise they’ll be living on chicken nuggets and chips. I mean I’m going to be the one bringing you soup when you text me that you’re sick and can’t get out of bed and ferrying you to the doctor’s even when you don’t want to go because you feel guilty about using the NHS when you just have a stomach bug. I mean we’re gonna knock down the fence between our gardens so we have one big garden, and we can both get a dog and take turns looking after it. I mean I’m going to be here, annoying you, until we’re old ladies, sitting in the same care home, talking about putting on a Shakespeare because we’re all old and bored as shit.
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Alice Oseman (Loveless)