William Shakespeare Quotes - Page 12

He that commends me to mine own contentCommends me to the thing I cannot get.I to the world am like a drop of waterThat in the ocean seeks another drop,Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself:So I, to find a mother and a brother,In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.

To be honest, as this world goes is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.Hamlet Act II, Scene II Lines 178-179

The grief that does not speak whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break.

That in the captain's but a choleric word,Which in the soldier is flat blasphemy.

For trust not him that hath once broken faith

Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.

Let me have war, say I: it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it's spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war's a destroyer of men.

Parting is such sweet sorrow

Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enough to beat the honest men and hang up them.

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 soordinary that the whippers are in love too.

Time shall unfold what pleated cunning hides: Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.

I am as poor as Job my lord but not so patient.

O, that's a brave man! He writes brave verses, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely,

love is blindand lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit

Have more than thou showest Speak less than thou knowest.

I must be cruel Only to be kind.

Love is not loveWhich alters when it alteration finds,Or bends with the remover to remove.O no, it is an ever-fixed markThat looks on tempests and is never shaken;It is the star to every wand'ring bark,Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken."

Mistrust of good success hath done this deed.O hateful error, Melancholy's child,Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of menThe things that are not? O Error, soon concieved,Thou never com'st unto a happy birth,But kill'st the mother that engendered thee.

Wooing, wedding, and repenting is as a Scotch jig, a measure, and a cinque-pace: the first suit is hot and hasty like a Scotch jig--and full as fantastical; the wedding, mannerly modest, as a measure, full of state and ancientry; and then comes repentance and with his bad legs falls into the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave.

What a fool honesty is.

Age cannot wither her nor custom stale Her infinite variety.

The prince of darkness is a gentleman.

I’ll follow thee and make a heaven of hell,To die upon the hand I love so well.

What's done, is done

O fortune fortune! all men call thee fickle.

O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!" - Cassio (Act II, Scene iii)

Whate'er I read to her. I'll plead for youAs for my patron, stand you so assured,As firmly as yourself were in still place - Yea, and perhaps with more successful wordsThan you, unless you were a scholar, sir.O this learning, what a thing it is!

How true a twain Seemeth this concordant one! Love hath reason, Reason none, If what parts, can so remain.

All's well that ends well.

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.

for my grief's so greatThat no supporter but the huge firm earthCan hold it up: here I and sorrows sit;Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.(Constance, from King John, Act III, scene 1)

Four days will quickly steep themselves in nightsFour nights will quickly dream away the time.

Of all the wonders that I have heard,It seems to me most strange that men should fear;Seeing death, a necessary end,Will come when it will come.(Act II, Scene 2)

Mislike me not for my complexion,The shadowed livery of the burnished sun,To whom I am a neighbor and near bred.Bring me the fairest creature northward born,Where Phoebus' fire scarce thaws the icicles,And let us make incision for your loveTo prove whose blood is reddest, his or mine.

But men may construe things after their fashion, Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.

My brain I'll prove the female to my soul; my soul the father: and these two beget a generation of still-breeding thoughts, and these same thoughts people this little world.

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe 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 endThe heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummationDevoutly 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 comeWhen we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause: there's the respectThat 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 spurnsThat patient merit of the unworthy takes,When he himself might his quietus makeWith 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 bournNo traveller returns, puzzles the willAnd makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of?Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;And thus the native hue of resolutionIs sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,And enterprises of great pith and momentWith this regard their currents turn awry,And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisonsBe all my sins remember'd!

Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor bare, forked animal as thou art.

Come what come may time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

No more light answers. Let our officersHave note what we purpose. I shall breakThe cause of our expedience to the QueenAnd get her leave to part. For not aloneThe death of Fulvia, with more urgent touches,Do strongly speak to us, but the letters tooOf many our contriving friends in RomePetition us at home. Sextus PompeiusHath given the dare to Caesar and commandsThe empire of the sea. Our slippery people,Whose love is never linked to the deserverTill his deserts are past, begin to throwPompey the Great and all his dignitiesUpon his son, who - high in name and power,Higher than both in blood and life - stands upFor the main soldier; whose quality, going on,The sides o' th' world may danger. Much is breedingWhich, like the courser's hair, hath yet but lifeAnd not a serpent's poison.

We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow

Sermons in stones and good in every thing.

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.

The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.

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.

She's beautiful, and therefore to be wooed; She is a woman, therefore to be won.

This is a way to kill a wife with kindness,And thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humour.He that knows better how to tame a shrew,Now let him speak. 'Tis charity to show.

Mine honor is my life; both grow in one.Take honor from me, and my life is done.

HERMIAGod speed fair Helena! whither away?HELENACall you me fair? that fair again unsay.Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair!Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue's sweet airMore tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear,When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.Sickness is catching: O, were favour so,Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go;My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,My tongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody.Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,The rest I'd give to be to you translated.O, teach me how you look, and with what artYou sway the motion of Demetrius' heart.HERMIAI frown upon him, yet he loves me still.HELENAO that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!HERMIAI give him curses, yet he gives me love.HELENAO that my prayers could such affection move!HERMIAThe more I hate, the more he follows me.HELENAThe more I love, the more he hateth me.HERMIAHis folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.HELENANone, but your beauty: would that fault were mine!

Though this be madness yet there is method in 't.

I am a man More sinn'd against than sinning.

I profess myself an enemy to all other joys, which the most precious square of sense possesses, and find I am alone felicitate in your dear highness love.

We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.

Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find.

Proper deformity shows not in the fiendSo horrid as in woman.

Life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

Nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it.

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,Rough-hew them how we will.