William Shakespeare Quotes

Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim, When King Cophetua loved the beggar-maid!

No sooner met but they looked; no sooner looked but they loved; no sooner loved but they sighed; no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage.

I pardon him, as God shall pardon me.

He's truly valiant that can wisely suffer The worst that man can breathe, and make his wrongs His outsides, to wear them like his raiment, carelessly, And ne'er prefer his injuries to his heart, To bring it into danger.

Oh! that you could turn your eyes towards the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves.

Use every man according to his desert and who should 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity, the less they deserve ... the more merit in your bounty.

Who is so firm that can't be seduced?

Much rain wears the marble.

Bassanio: Do all men kill all the things they do not love? Shylock: Hates any man the thing he would not kill? Bassanio: Every offence is not a hate at first.

Cry "havoc!" and let loose the dogs of war, That this foul deed shall smell above the earth With carrion men, groaning for burial.

Is this the generation of love? Hot blood, hot thoughts and hot deeds? Why, they are vipers. Is love a generation of vipers?

I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it.

For it falls out That what we have we prize not to the worth Whiles we enjoy it, but being lacked and lost, Why, then we rack the value, then we find The virtue that possession would not show us While it was ours.

This fell sergeant, Death, Is strict in his arrest.

To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

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 so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.

What a terrible era in which idiots govern the blind.

It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase, and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of is metal to make virgins. Virginity, by being once lost, may be ten times found: by being ever kept, it is ever lost. ’Tis too cold a companion: away with ’t!

The lily I condemned for thy hand, And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair: The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, One blushing shame, another white despair; A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath; But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth A vengeful canker eat him up to death. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee.

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 demonstrate The native act and figure of my heart In compliment extern, ’tis not long after But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at. I am not what I am

Be great in act, as you have been in thought.

Such tricks hath strong imagination, That, if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy; Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

Tis the times' plague, when madmen lead the blind.

A man cannot make him laugh; but that's no marvel; he drinks no wine.... If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them should be, to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.

A high hope for a low heaven: God grant us patience!

This feather stirs; she lives! if it be so, it is a chance which does redeem all sorrows that ever I have felt.

Boldness be my friend.

What must be shall be.

In such business Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ ignorant More learned than the ears.

Virtue that transgresses is but patched with sin; and sin that amends is but patched with virtue.

. . . it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself it is needful that you frame the season of your own harvest.

I am not merry, but I do beguile the thing I am by seeming otherwise.

Some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone.

This is his uncle's teaching, this Worcester, Malevolent to you In all aspects, Which makes him prune himself and bristle up The crest of youth against your dignity.

I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more, is none

But jealous souls will not be answered so, They are not ever jealous for the cause, But jealous for they're jealous. 'Tis a monster Begot upon itself, born on itself.

There are occasions and causes, why and wherefore in all things.

I hold it cowardice To rest mistrustful where a noble heart Hath pawned an open hand in sign of love.

The sense of death is most in apprehension, And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.

Be to yourself as you would to your friend.

In a false quarrel there is no true valor.

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor.

There's beggary in love that can be reckoned

Who can be patient in extremes?

Haste is needful in a desperate case.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come.

Love's best habit is a soothing tongue

From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered- We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.