William Shakespeare Quotes

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698 Quotes Revealing Timeless Wisdom on Love, Trust, and Human Nature

“Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream—For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause, there's the respect, That makes calamity of so long life”

“Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.”

“And what’s he then that says I play the villain?”

“Done to death by slanderous tongue”

“When the
mind's free,
The Body's delicate.”

“At this hour
Lie at my mercy all mine enemies.”

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

“The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.”

“Sometimes when we are labeled, when we are branded our brand becomes our calling.”

“You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with your uncertainty!”

“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved”

“As full of spirit as the month of May, and as gorgeous as the sun in Midsummer.”

“Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe”

“But, indeed, words are very rascals, since bonds [vows] disgraced them."
Viola: "Thy reason, man?"
Feste: "Troth [Truthfully], sir, I can yield you none without words, and words are grown so false, I am loathe to prove reason with them.”

“I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot;
Follow your spirit: and upon this charge,
Cry — God for Harry! England and Saint George!”

“Watch out he's winding the watch of his wit, by and by it will strike.”

“Truth is truth to the end of reckoning.”

“By my soul I swear, there is no power in the tongue of man to alter me.”

“Nothing in his life became him like leaving it.”

“… and then, in dreaming, / The clouds methought would open and show riches / Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked / I cried to dream again.”

“I go and it is done. The bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell.”

“A plague on both your houses.”

“I'll have no husband, if you be not he.”

“Clown: Good Madonna, why mournest thou?
Olivia: Good Fool, for my brother's death.
Clown:I think his soul is in hell, Madonna.
Olivia:I know his soul is in heaven, Fool.
Clown: The more fool, Madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven.”

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

“O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, / That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!”

“I dreamt my lady came and found me dead
…………
And breathed such life with kisses in my lips
That I revived and was an emperor.”

“Virtue? A fig! 'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus.”

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

“Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much. Lady, as you are mine, I am yours: I give away myself for
you and dote upon the exchange.”

“The worst was this: my love was my decay.”

“To unpathed waters, undreamed shores.”

“More matter with less art.”

“Happy are those who hear their detractions and can put them to mending.”

“Something wicked this way comes”

“The art of our necessities is strange
That can make vile things precious.”

“A thousand times good night. A thousand times the worse, to want thy light. Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books, but love from love, toward school with heavy looks.”

“The moon's an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.”

“Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe:
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.
March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell;
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.”

“Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles.”

“Why should we rise because 'tis light?
Did we lie down because t'was night?”

“My dull brain was wrought with things forgotten.”

“Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night.”

“Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.”

“Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;
Life and these lips have long been separated:
Death lies on her like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.”

“It were a grief so brief to part with thee.
Farewell.”

“Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it.”

“This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven.”

“therein lies the rub”