William Shakespeare Quotes

3,205 Sourced Quotes

Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

William Shakespeare
I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this.

William Shakespeare
Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence; the next more easy.

William Shakespeare
Let me have no lying; it becomes none but tradesmen.

William Shakespeare
Not a mouse
Shall disturb this hallowed house:
I am sent with broom before,
To sweep the dust behind the door.

William Shakespeare
Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age?

William Shakespeare
Lest the bargain should catch cold and starve.

William Shakespeare
O! it is excellent
To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

William Shakespeare
Though I be but the prince of Wales, yet I am king of courtesy

William Shakespeare
But all the story of the night told over,
And all their minds transfigur'd so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images,
And grows to something of great constancy,
But, howsoever, strange and admirable.

William Shakespeare
O mighty Caesar! dost thou lie so low?
Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure?

William Shakespeare
What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?

William Shakespeare
You lie, in faith; for you are call'd plain Kate, And bonny Kate and sometimes Kate the curst; But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate, For dainties are all Kates, and therefore, Kate, Take this of me, Kate of my consolation; Hearing thy mildness praised in every town, Thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded, Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs, Myself am moved to woo thee for my wife.

William Shakespeare
I'll say she looks as clear as morning roses newly washed with dew.

William Shakespeare
When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries.

William Shakespeare
There's neither honesty, manhood, nor good fellowship in thee.

William Shakespeare
Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O any thing, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness, serious vanity, Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms, Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health, Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! This love feel I, that feel no love in this.

William Shakespeare
Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying! I grant you I was down and out of breath; and so was he; but we rose both at an instant, and fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock.

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

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

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

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

William Shakespeare