William Shakespeare Quotes

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

“Take it in what sense thou wilt.”

“Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.”

“Oh why rebuke you him that loves you so? / Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe.”

“A wretched soul, bruised with adversity,
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;
But were we burdened with light weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain.”

“Discretion is the better part of valor.”

“I am a man,
More sinn'd against than sinning.”

“It is silliness to live when to live is torment, and then have we a prescription to die when death is our physician.”

“Bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible.”

“More of your conversation would infect my brain.”

“If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not…”

“How does he love me? With adoration, with fertile tears,
With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.”

“One half of me is yours, the other half is yours,
Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,
And so all yours.”

“I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, A stage where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one.”

“Educated men are so impressive!”

“If we shadows have offended,
Know but this and all is mended.
That you have but slumbered here,
While these visions did appear,
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding, but a dream.”

“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space.”

“Is it not strange that sheep's guts could hail souls out of men's bodies?”

“O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?”

“Blood will have blood.”

“I would not wish any companion in the world but you.”

“Some rise by sin, and some by virtues fall.”

“Benvolio: What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?
Romeo: Not having that, which, having, makes them short.”

“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.”

“Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.”

“Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart, or in the head?”

“Life… is a paradise to what we fear of death.”

“Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May 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.”

“Alas, that love, so gentle in his view,
Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!

*It’s sad. Love looks like a nice thing, but it’s actually very rough when you experience it.”

“This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.”

“Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania”

“I hold my peace, sir? no;
No, I will speak as liberal as the north;
Let heaven and men and devils, let them all,
All, all, cry shame against me, yet I'll speak.”

“One pain is lessened by another’s anguish…. Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die.”

“There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.”

“But I am constant as the Northern Star,
Of whose true fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.”

“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

“Thou weigh'st thy words before thou givest them breath.”

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

“O me, you juggler, you canker-blossom, you thief of love!”

“Stars hide your fires; let not light see my black and deep desires: The eyes wink at the hand; yet let that be which the eye fears, when it is done, to see”

“He that is strucken blind can not forget the precious treasure of his eyesight lost.”

“O, let me kiss that hand!

KING LEAR: Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.”

“Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books,
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.”

“What a fool honesty is.”

“You may my glories and my state depose,
But not my griefs; still am I king of those.”

“Good wombs have borne bad sons."
-- (Miranda, I:2)”

“It is not, nor it cannot, come to good,
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”

“Where is Polonius?
HAMLET
In heaven. Send hither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i' th' other place yourself. But if indeed you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.”

“A little more than kin, a little less than kind.”

“What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused.”