William Shakespeare Quotes

Vile worm, thou wast o'erlook'd even in thy birth.

What, can the devil speak true?

Then to Silvia let us sing that Silvia is excelling. She excels each mortal thing upon the dull earth dwelling.

I despised my arrival on this earth and I despise my departure; it is a tragedy.

What is past is prologue.

For sorrow ends not, when it seemeth done.

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain

You shall more command with years than with your weapons.

Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness! This is the state of man: today he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, tomorrow 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.

Thou hast nor youth nor age But as it were an after dinner sleep Dreaming of both.

Et tu Brute! (You too, Brutus!)

And since you know you cannot see yourself, so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself, that of yourself which you yet know not of.

Ambition, the soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than gain which darkens him.

Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

I am not in the giving vein today.

Truth will come to sight; murder cannot be hid long.

If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul.

Why, what's the matter, That you have such a February face, So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?

My crown is in my heart, not on my head.

Thou unfit for any place but hell.

Lawless are they that make their wills their law.

But indeed an old religious uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an inland man; one that knew courtship too well, for there he fell in love. I have heard him read many lectures against it; and I thank God I am not a woman, to be touched with so many giddy offenses as he hath generally taxed their whole sex withal.

If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide, By self-example mayst thou be denied.

To show our simple skill, That is the true beginning of our end.

When I was at home I was in a better place

Love, which teacheth me that thou and I am one

He that dies pays all debts.

Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' the milk of human kindness.

Hang him, swaggering rascal!

A woman's thought runs before her actions.

We are advertis'd by our loving friends.

There is none of my uncle's marks upon you; he taught me how to know a man in love; in which cage of rushes I am sure you are not prisoner.

You have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser.

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man That function is smothered in surmise, And nothing is but what is not.

A plague of sighing and grief! It blows a man up like a bladder.

The Dear father Would with his daughter speak, commands her service; Are they inform'd of this?

If ever (as that ever may be near) you meet in some fresh cheek the power of fancy, then shall you know the wounds invisible that love's keen, arrows make.

O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O limed soul that, struggling to be free, art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay! Bow, stubborn knees! and, heart with strings of steel, be soft as sinews of the new-born babe!

in that small [time] most greatly lived this star of England: Fortune made his sword, By which the world's best garden he achiev'd And left it to his son imperial lord. Henry the Sixth, in infant bands crown'd King of France and England did this King succeed; Whose state so many of had the managing, That they lost France and made his England bleed.

I am ill at these numbers.

I must be gone and live, or stay and die.

In scorn of nature, art gave lifeless life.

There is a time in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

RUMOUR: "Upon my tongues continual slanders ride, The which in every language I pronounce, Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.

Night's candles have burned out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintops." Hope tinged with melancholy - like life.

But miserable most, to love unloved? This you should pity rather than despise

I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon, Than such a Roman.