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
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Playwrights
Poets

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

Random William Shakespeare quote

2,353 quotes

Lear: I'll talk a word with this same learned Theban.
What is your study?
Edgar: How to prevent the fiend, and to kill vermin.

King Lear (1603)

Rape, call you it, my lord, to seize my own,
My truth-betrothèd love and now my wife?
But let the laws of Rome determine all;
Meanwhile I am possess'd of that is mine.

I was in love with my bed.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1590)

So bees with smoke and doves with noisome stench
Are from their hives and houses driven away.
They call'd us for our fierceness English dogs;
Now like to whelps, we crying run away.

This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him:
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do.

Henry VIII (1613)

Gloucester: Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine.
Lady Anne: Would they were basilisks, to strike thee dead!

This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Cæsar;
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.

Julius Cæsar (1599)

And if the boy have not a woman’s gift
To rain a shower of commanded tears,
An onion will do well for such a shift,
Which, in a napkin being close convey’d,
Shall in despite enforce a watery eye.

You have seen
Sunshine and rain at once. * * * those happy smilets,
That play'd on her ripe lip, seem'd not to know
What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence,
As pearls from diamonds dropp'd.

King Lear (1608)

Do you see yonder cloud, that's almost in shape of a camel?
By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
Methinks it is like a weasel.
It is backed like a weasel.
Or, like a whale?
Very like a whale.

I'll be as patient as a gentle stream
And make a pastime of each weary step,
Till the last step have brought me to my love;
And there I'll rest, as, after much turmoil,
A blessed soul doth in Elysium.

And oftentimes, excusing of a fault
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 (1598)

Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain-tops that freeze,
Bow themselves, when he did sing:
To his music, plants and flowers
Ever sprung; as sun and showers,
There had made a lasting spring.

Henry VIII (1613)

What is’t to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?

The first the Retort Courteous; the second the Quip Modest; the third the Reply Churlish; the fourth the Reproof Valiant; the fifth the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh the Lie Direct.

O polish'd perturbation! golden care!
That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide
To many a watchful night! sleep with it now!
Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet
As he whose brow with homely biggen bound
Snores out the watch of night.

Nor is the wide world ignorant of her worth,
For the four winds blow in from every coast
Renownèd suitors, and her sunny locks
Hang on her temples like a golden fleece;
Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchos' strand,
And many Jasons come in quest of her.

The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity;
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition —
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.

Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it
To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou com'st:
Suppose the singing birds musicians;
The grass whereon thou tread'st the presence strew'd;
The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more
Than a delightful measure or a dance.

Richard II (1595)

Attribution

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