William Shakespeare Quotes

3,205 Sourced Quotes

I have been long a sleeper; but I trust
My absence doth neglect no great design
Which by my presence might have been concluded.

William Shakespeare
Look on beauty, and you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight; which therein works a miracle in Nature, making them lightest that wear most of it: so are those crisped snaky golden locks which make such wanton gambols with the wind upon supposed fairness, often known to be the dowry of a second head, the skull that bred them in the sepulchre.

William Shakespeare
I rather would entreat thy company; To see the wonders of the world abroad, Than, living dully sluggardized at home, Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.

William Shakespeare
But when he performs astronomers foretell it.

William Shakespeare
In winter's tedious nights sit by the fire With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales Of woeful ages, long ago betid

William Shakespeare
When clouds are seen wise men put on their cloaks; When great leaves fall then winter is at hand.

William Shakespeare
To have seen much and to have nothing is to have rich eyes and poor hands.

William Shakespeare
God is our fortress, in whose conquering name
Let us resolve to scale their flinty bulwarks.

William Shakespeare
I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking; so full of valor that they smote the air, for breathing in their faces, beat the ground for kissing of their feet.

William Shakespeare
Look how the world's poor people are amazed at apparitions, signs and prodigies!

William Shakespeare
We make ourselves fools to disport ourselves And spend our flatteries to drink those men Upon whose age we void it up again With poisonous spite and envy.

William Shakespeare
But till all graces be in one woman, one woman shall not come in my grace. Rich she shall be, that's certain; wise, or I'll none; virtuous, or I'll never cheapen her; fair, or I'll never look on her; mild, or come not near me; noble, or not I for an angel; of good discourse, and excellent musician and her hair shall be of what colour it shall please God.

William Shakespeare
Obey thy parents, keep thy word justly; swear not; commit not with man's sworn spouse; set not thy sweet heart on proud array. * * * Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy pen from lenders' books.

William Shakespeare
Weed your better judgments of all opinion that grows rank in them.

William Shakespeare
Wise men ne'er sit and wail their woes, but presently prevent the ways to wail.

William Shakespeare
Love and meekness, lord,
Become a churchman better than ambition:
Win straying souls with modesty again,
Cast none away.

William Shakespeare
Slanders, sir, for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging think amber and plum-tree gum, and that they have a plentiful lack of wit, together with most weak hams.

William Shakespeare
On your eyelids crown the god of sleep,
Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness,
Making such difference 'twixt wake and sleep
As is the difference betwixt day and night
The hour before the heavenly-harness'd team
Begins his golden progress in the east.

William Shakespeare
A true repentance shuns the evil itself, more than the external suffering or the shame.

William Shakespeare
Think'st thou it honourable for a noble man
Still to remember wrongs?

William Shakespeare
Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not budge; You go not till I set you up a glass Where you may see the innermost part of you.

William Shakespeare
The southern wind
Doth play the trumpet to his purposes;
And, by his hollow whistling in the leaves,
Foretells a tempest and a blustering day.

William Shakespeare
Of all knowledge the wise and good seek most to know themselves.

William Shakespeare
Love's heralds should be thoughts,
Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams
Driving back shadows over low'ring hills.
Therefore do nimble-pinioned doves draw Love,
And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.

William Shakespeare
Be advised; Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot That it do singe yourself: we may outrun, By violent swiftness, that which we run at, And lose by over-running. Know you not, The fire that mounts the liquor til run o'er, In seeming to augment it wastes it?

William Shakespeare
Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odour and in hue Could make me any summer's story tell, Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew; Nor did I wonder at the lily's white, Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose; They were but sweet, but figures of delight, Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.

William Shakespeare
To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be; it is impossible: Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

William Shakespeare
Thou hast not half that power to do me harm As I have to be hurt.

William Shakespeare
Give me a staff of honor for mine age,
But not a sceptre to control the world.

William Shakespeare
Ingrateful man with liquorish draughts, and morsels unctuous, greases his pure mind that from it all consideration slips.

William Shakespeare