William Shakespeare Quotes

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

“So fair and foul a day I have not seen.”

“And sleep, that sometime shuts up sorrow's eye, Steal me awhile from mine own company.”

“O! she doth teach the torches to burn bright
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.

- Romeo”

“I am very proud, revengeful,
ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have
thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape,
or time to act them in.”

“How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath
To say to me that thou art out of breath?”

“Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.”

“She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd,
And I lov'd her that she did pity them”

“One fire burns out another's burning,
One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish.”

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

“Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale?
Polonius: Very like a whale.”

“Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”

“And worse I may be yet: the worst is not
So long as we can say 'This is the worst.”

“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything. (Sonnet XCVIII)”

“Love me!… Why?”

“Out of her favour, where I am in love.”

“I say there is no darkness but ignorance.”

“I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.”

“Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens to the which our wills are gardeners.”

“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”

“Men should be what they seem.”

“Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York.”

“Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.”

“He jests at scars that never felt a wound.”

“Summer's lease hath all too short a date.”

“If I be waspish, best beware my sting.”

“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.”

“Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.”

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

“Get thee to a nunnery.”

“Let us not burthen our remembrance with
A heaviness that's gone.”

“Rude am I in my speech, And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace.”

“And therefore, — since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days, —
I am determined to prove a villain,
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.”

“I do feel it gone,
But know not how it went”

“Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul But I do love thee! and when I love thee not, Chaos is come again.”

“Though I am not naturally honest, I am sometimes so by chance.”

“How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!”

“Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.”

“Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come”

“O time, thou must untangle this, not I.
It is too hard a knot for me t'untie.”

“There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.”

“From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world.”

“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

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

“Tax not so bad a voice to slander music any more than once.”

“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

“They do not love, that do not show their love.”

“I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy
eyes—and moreover, I will go with thee to thy uncle’s.”

“When beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”

“Time travels at different speeds for different people. I can tell you who time strolls for, who it trots for, who it gallops for, and who it stops cold for.”