60 quotes
Have you not heard it said full oft,
A woman's nay doth stand for nought?
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.
And have not we affections,
Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?
Then let them use us well: else let them know,
The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.
Othello (1603)
There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,
That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,
More pangs and fears than wars or women have.
Henry VIII (1613)
Black brows they say
Become some women best, so that there be not
Too much hair there, but in a semicircle
Or a half-moon made with a pen.
A maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens,
And in the essential vesture of creation
Does tire the ingener.
Othello (1603)
You are pictures out of doors,
Bells in your parlours, wild-cats in your kitchens,
Saints in your injuries, devils being offended,
Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds.
Othello (1603)
—And is not my hostess of the tavern a most sweet wench?
—As the honey of Hybla, my old lad of the castle.
Why are our bodies soft and weak and smooth,
Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
But that our soft conditions and our hearts
Should well agree with our external parts?
Why, then thou canst not break her to the lute?
Why, no; for she hath broke the lute to me.
One woman is fair, yet I am well; another is wise, yet I am well: another virtuous, yet I am well; but till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace.
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here...
Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall.
Macbeth (1606)
Thou dotard! Thou art woman-tir’d, unroosted
By thy Dame Partlet here.
I grant I am a woman, but withal,
A woman that Lord Brutus took to wife:
I grant I am a woman; but withal
A woman well-reputed; Cato's daughter.
Julius Cæsar (1599)
Women are frail too.
Ay, as the glasses where they view themselves;
Which are as easy broke as they make forms.
Women! help heaven! men their creation mar
In profiting by them.
Frailty, thy name is woman!—
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears;—why she, even she,
* * * married with my uncle.
Hamlet (1600)
Her sighs will make a battery in his breast;
Her tears will pierce into a marble heart;
The tiger will be mild whiles she doth mourn;
And Nero will be tainted with remorse,
To hear and see her plaints.
'Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud;
But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small:
'Tis virtue that doth make them most admired;
The contrary doth make thee wondered at:
'Tis government that makes them seem divine.
The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to’t
With a more riotous appetite.
Down from the waist they are Centaurs,
Though women all above:
But to the girdle do the Gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiends’.
King Lear (1608)
OTHELLO:
O devil, devil!
If that the earth could teem with woman's tears,
Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.