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William Shakespeare on Women

1564–1616 England

← All quotes by William Shakespeare

60 quotes

A woman mov'd is like a fountain troubled,
Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.

Women are as roses; whose fair flower,
Being once display’d, doth fall that very hour.

I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace.

What peremptory, eagle-sighted eye
Dares look upon the heaven of her brow,
That is not blinded by her majesty?

You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.

Macbeth (1606)

Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband.

Her voice was ever soft,
Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman.

King Lear (1608)

You speak like a green girl,
Unsifted in such perilous circumstance.

If ladies be but young and fair,
They have the gift to know it.

Proper deformity seems not in the fiend
So horrid as in woman.

King Lear (1608)

Fair ladies mask'd are roses in their bud:
Dismask'd, their damask sweet commixture shown,
Are angels veiling clouds, or roses blown.

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They are the ground, the books, the academes,
From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.

She speaks poniards, and every word stabs: if her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near her; she would infect to the north star.

'Tis a good hearing, when children are toward.
But a harsh hearing, when women are froward.

Muse not that I thus suddenly proceed;
For what I will, I will, and there an end.

Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall.

If, one by one, you wedded all the world,
Or from the all that are took something good,
To make a perfect woman, she you kill'd
Would be unparallel'd.

Women are angels, wooing:
Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing;
That she beloved knows nought that knows not this:
Men prize the thing ungained more than it is.

Troilus and Cressida (1602)

O constancy, be strong upon my side,
Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue!
I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.

Julius Cæsar (1599)

O most delicate fiend!
Who is't can read a woman?

Cymbeline (1611)

Attribution

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