William Shakespeare Quotes

3,205 Sourced Quotes

Let us make an honorable retreat; though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.

William Shakespeare
Let them hang themselves in their own straps.

William Shakespeare
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

William Shakespeare
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter; that, when he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still.

William Shakespeare
When I have plucked the rose, I cannot give it vital growth again, It needs must wither. I'll smell it on the tree.

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

William Shakespeare
The devil a puritan that he is, or anything constantly but a time-pleaser; an affectioned ass.

William Shakespeare
What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heaves
To wash it white as snow?

William Shakespeare
Was ever woman in this humour wooed?
Was ever woman in this humour won?

William Shakespeare
Your "if" is the only peacemaker; much virtue in "if."

William Shakespeare
If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, Without my stir.

William Shakespeare
By how much unexpected, by so much
We must awake endeavour for defence;
For courage mounteth with occasion.

William Shakespeare
The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope.

William Shakespeare
Some report a sea-maid spawn'd him; some that he was begot between two stock-fishes. But it is certain that when he makes water his urine is congealed ice.

William Shakespeare
By Heaven, my soul is purg'd from grudging hate; And with my hand I seal my true heart's love

William Shakespeare
Come what sorrow can, It cannot countervail the exchange of joy, That one short minute gives me in her sight

William Shakespeare
When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men.

William Shakespeare
O! the blood more stirs To rouse a lion than to start a hare!

William Shakespeare
O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note, to drown me in thy sister's flood of tears.

William Shakespeare
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face.

William Shakespeare
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.

William Shakespeare
Commit
The oldest sins the newest kind of ways.

William Shakespeare
Perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honor bright: to have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery.

William Shakespeare
Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off.

William Shakespeare
We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.

William Shakespeare
As a decrepit father takes delight To see his active child do deeds of youth, So I, made lame by fortune's dearest spite, Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.

William Shakespeare
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out
Against the wreckful siege of battering days,
When rocks impregnable are not so stout,
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?

William Shakespeare
Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee,
And for thy maintenance commits his body
To painful labour both by sea and land,
To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
Whilst thou liest warm at home, secure and safe;
And craves no other tribute at thy hands
But love, fair looks and true obedience;
Too little payment for so great a debt.

William Shakespeare
O! that I were as great As is my grief, or lesser than my name, Or that I could forget what I have been, Or not remember what I must be now.

William Shakespeare
O! that a man might know The end of this day's business, ere it come.

William Shakespeare