William Shakespeare Quotes

1564–1616 England

William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 (baptised) – 23 April 1616) was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.

England
Actors
Playwrights
Poets

Also known as: Shakespeare, Shakespeare, William, Shakespearean, Shakspeare

Random William Shakespeare quote

2,353 quotes

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.

For government, through high and low and lower,
Put into parts, doth keep in one consent,
Congreeing in a full and natural close,
Like music.

Henry V (1599)

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.

Alas, poor chin! many a wart is richer.

Troilus and Cressida (1602)

The labour we delight in physics pain.

Macbeth (1605)

Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter: that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still.

Henry V (1599)

There lives within the very flame of love
A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it;
And nothing is at a like goodness still;
For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,
Dies in his own too much.

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 (1605)

When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.—Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.

Which of them shall I take?
Both? one? or neither? Neither can be enjoy'd,
If both remain alive.

King Lear (1608)

So loving to my mother
That he might not esteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly.

I had not so much of man in me,
And all my mother came into my eyes,
And gave me up to tears.

Henry V (1599)

He can write and read and cast accompt.
O monstrous!
We took him setting of boys' copies.
Here's a villain!

The weary sun hath made a golden set,
And, by the bright track of his fiery car,
Gives signal of a goodly day to-morrow.

Richard III (1591)

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples.

King Lear (1608)

O lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son!
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!
My widow-comfort, and my sorrow's cure!

King John (1598)

One that I brought up of a puppy; one that I saved from drowning when three or four of his blind brothers and sisters went to it.

Set on your foot,
And with a heart new-fir'd I follow you,
To do I know not what: but it sufficeth
That Brutus leads me on.

Julius Cæsar (1599)

I had rather chop this hand off at a blow,
And with the other fling it at thy face,
Than bear so low a sail, to strike to thee.

There is none but he
Whose being I do fear; and, under him,
My Genius is rebuk'd: as, it is said,
Mark Antony's was by Cæsar.

Macbeth (1605)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: William Shakespeare (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.