William Shakespeare Quotes - Page 3

Give me my Romeo and when he shall die. Take him and cut him out in little stars And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.

This hand shall never more come near thee with such friendship

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:Then, heigh-ho, the holly!This life is most jolly.

If all the year were playing holidays To sport would be as tedious as to work.

The Play's the Thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.

O, let my books be then the eloquenceAnd dumb presagers of my speaking breast;Who plead for love, and look for recompense,More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Your face, my thane, is as a book where menMay read strange matters. To beguile the time,Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,But be the serpent under't.

You are thought here to the most senseless and fit man for the job.

Within the infant rind of this small flowerPoison hath residence and medicine power.For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part;Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart.Two such opposèd kings encamp them still,In man as well as herbs—grace and rude will. And where the worser is predominant,Full soon the canker death eats up that plant.(Inside the little rind of this weak flower, there is both poison and powerful medicine. If you smell it, you feel good all over your body. But if you taste it, you die. There are two opposite elements in everything, in men as well as in herbs—good and evil. When evil is dominant, death soon kills the body like cancer.)

Go, prick thy face and over-red thy fear,Thou lily-livered boy.

True, I talk of dreams,Which are the children of an idle brain,Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,Which is as thin of substance as the air,And more inconstant than the wind, who woos Even now the frozen bosom of the north,And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.

Tis mightiest in the mightiest it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown His sceptre shows the force of temporal power The attribute to awe and majesty Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings But mercy is above this sceptred sway It is enthroned in the hearts of kings It is an attribute to God himself And earthly power doth then show likest God's When mercy seasons justice.

Brief as the lightning in the collied night;That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and Earth,And ere a man hath power to say "Behold!"The jaws of darkness do devour it up.So quick bright things come to confusion.

Those friends thou hast and their adoption tried grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.

Why then the world's mine oyster Which I with sword will open.

There is a divinity that shapes our ends Rough-hew them how we will.

There's villainous news abroad.

Thus weary of the world, away she hies,And yokes her silver doves; by whose swift aidTheir mistress mounted through the empty skiesIn her light chariot quickly is convey'd;Holding their course to Paphos, where their queenMeans to immure herself and not be seen.

Orsino: For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,More longing, wavering, sooner lost and won,Than women's are. ...For women are as roses, whose fair flow'rBeing once display'd doth fall that very hour.Viola: And so they are; alas, that they are so!To die, even when they to perfection grow!

BOTTOMThere are things in this comedy of Pyramus and Thisby that will never please. First, Pyramus must draw a sword to kill himself; which the ladiescannot abide. How answer you that?SNOUTBy'r lakin, a parlous fear.STARVELINGI believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done.BOTTOMNot a whit: I have a device to make all well.Write me a prologue; and let the prologue seem tosay, we will do no harm with our swords, and thatPyramus is not killed indeed; and, for the morebetter assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am notPyramus, but Bottom the weaver: this will put themout of fear.QUINCEWell, we will have such a prologue; and it shall bewritten in eight and six.BOTTOMNo, make it two more; let it be written in eight and eight.

Then others for breath of words respect,Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.

Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,— For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

...speak to me as to thy thinkingAs thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughtsThe worst of words...

- Where is Polonius?- In heaven; send hither to see: if your messenger find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself.

Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.

This bond is forfeit And lawfully by this the Jew may claim A pound of flesh.

The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?

To hold as 't were the mirror up to nature.

Beshrew your eyes,They have o'erlook'd me and divided me;One half of me is yours, the other half yours,Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,And so all yours.

A lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing.

I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.

Were I the Moor I would not be Iago.In following him I follow but myself;Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,But seeming so for my peculiar end.For when my outward action doth demonstrateThe native act and figure of my heartIn compliment extern, ’tis not long afterBut I will wear my heart upon my sleeveFor daws to peck at. I am not what I am

CASSIO: Dost thou hear, my honest friend?CLOWN: No, I hear not your honest friend, I hear you.CASSIO: Prithee, keep up thy quillets.

But then I sigh, with a piece of ScriptureTell them that God bids us to do evil for good; And thus I clothe my naked villanyWith odd old ends stolen out of Holy Writ;And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.

The pow'r I have on you is to spare you / The malice towards you, to forgive you. Posthumus

The ripest fruit first falls.

If you can look into the seeds of time and say which grain will grow and which will not speak then to me.

Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.

Beshrew me but I love her heartily, For she is wise, if I can judge of her, And fair she is, if that mine eyes be true, And true she is, as she hath proved herself: And therefore like herself, wise, fair, and true, Shall she be placed in my constant soul.

Now I am past all comforts here but prayer.

Sigh no more ladies sigh no more Men were deceivers ever One foot in sea and one on shore To one thing constant never.

it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance

When I saw you, I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew

My love is as a fever, longing stillFor that which longer nurseth the disease;Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,The uncertain sickly appetite to please.My reason, the physician to my love,Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,Hath left me, and I desperate now approve,Desire his death, which physic did except.Past cure I am, now reason is past care,And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,At random from the truth vainly express'd;For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

For sorrow ends not, when it seemeth done.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.

Et tu Brute! (You too Brutus!)

If I be waspish, best beware my sting.

My crown is called content a crown it is that seldom kings enjoy.

For thy sweet love remembr'd such wealth bringsThat then, I scorn to change my state with kings.

Men of few words are the best men."(3.2.41)

Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know.

How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

An old man is twice a child.

And thereby hangs a tale.

Their manners are more gentle, kind, than of our generation you shall find.

Things without all remedy should be without regard: what's done is done.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, and they shall live, and he in them still green.