William Shakespeare Quotes

3,205 Sourced Quotes

Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights;
Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

William Shakespeare
Nay, my lords,
Ceremony was but devised at first
To set a gloss on faint deeds, hollow welcomes,
Recanting goodness, sorry ere 'tis shown;
But where there is true friendship, there needs none.

William Shakespeare
O, monstrous! but one half-penny-worth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack!

William Shakespeare
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
The extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine.

William Shakespeare
Jog on, jog on the foot-path way,
And merrily hent the stile-a:
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a.

William Shakespeare
Like a strutting player, whose conceit Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich To hear the wooden dialogue and sound 'Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage.

William Shakespeare
I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.

William Shakespeare
Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.

William Shakespeare
I say it was never merry world in England since gentlemen came up.

William Shakespeare
I must obey; his art is of such power,
It would control my dam's god, Setebos,
And make a vassal of him.

William Shakespeare
And writers say, as the most forward bud
Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,
Even so by love the young and tender wit
Is turn'd to folly, blasting in the bud,
Losing his verdure even in the prime,
And all the fair effects of future hopes.

William Shakespeare
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

William Shakespeare
I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting

William Shakespeare
But to my mind,—though I am native here,
And to the manner born,—it is a custom
More honoured in the breach than the observance.

William Shakespeare
At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth;
But like of each thing that in season grows.

William Shakespeare
To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently a beast!

William Shakespeare
The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.

William Shakespeare
Well, God's above all; and there be souls must be saved, and there be souls must not be saved.

William Shakespeare
Baited like eagles having lately bath'd... As full of spirit as the month of May, And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer.

William Shakespeare
What is honour? A word. What is that word, honour? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o' Wednesday.

William Shakespeare
Discuss unto me; art thou officer?
Or art thou base, common and popular?

William Shakespeare
It is a heretic that makes the fire,
Not she which burns in 't.

William Shakespeare
I see, lady, the gentleman is not in your books.

William Shakespeare
To the latter end of a fray and the beginning of a feast Fits a dull fighter and a keen guest.

William Shakespeare
What! will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?

William Shakespeare
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.

William Shakespeare
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken.
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

William Shakespeare
Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.

William Shakespeare
'Zounds! I was never so bethump'd with words Since I first call'd my brother's father dad.

William Shakespeare
I am dying, Egypt, dying; only
I here importune death awhile, until
Of many thousand kisses the poor last
I lay upon thy lips.

William Shakespeare