William Shakespeare Quotes (3360 Quotes)

Friends, that have been thus forward in my right,
I thank you all and here dismiss you all,
And to the love and favour of my country
Commit myself, my person, and the cause.

Silence, good mother; hear the embassy.

See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand O that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek.

In natures infinite book of secrecy, a little I can read.

Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lenders books, and defy the foul fiend.

Your old virginity is like one of our French withered pears it looks ill, it eats dryly.

Then if for my love, thou my love receivest,
I cannot blame thee, for my love thou usest;
But yet be blamed, if thou thy self deceivest
By wilful taste of what thy self refusest.

Is not the truth the truth?

She's beautiful, and therefore to be wooed She is a woman, therefore to be won.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were when first your eye I eyed, Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold Have from the forests shook three summers' pride, Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd In process of the seasons have I seen, Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd, Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green. Ah yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand, Steal from his figure and no pace perceived So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, Hath motion and mine eye may be deceived For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred Ere you were born was beauty's summer dead.

Say his name, good friend.

My heart is turned to stone I strike it, and it hurts my hand.

I think good thoughts, whilst other write good words,
And like unlettered clerk still cry "Amen"
To every hymn that able spirit affords
In polished form of well-refinèd pen.

She says I am not fair, that I lack manners;
She calls me proud, and that she could not love me,
Were man as rare as Phoenix.

Ah, do not tear away thyself from me;
For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall
A drop of water in the breaking gulf,
And take unmingled thence that drop again
Without addition or diminishing,
As take from me thyself, and not me too.

Cupid is a knavish lad, Thus to make poor females mad

I thank my liege that in regard of me
He shortens four years of my son's exile;
But little vantage shall I reap thereby,
For ere the six years that he hath to spend
Can change their moons and bring their times about,
My oil-dried lamp and time-bewasted light
Shall be extinct with age and endless night;
My inch of taper will be burnt and done,
And blindfold death not let me see my son.

To business that we love we rise betime, And go to't with delight.

The object of art is to give life a shape.

All friends shall taste
The wages of their virtue, and all foes
The cup of their deservings.

O God that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains that we should, with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts.

Why, then 'tis none to you for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so to me it Denmark is a prison.

I warrant you, with pure love and troubled brain, he hath
ta'en his bow and arrows, and is gone forth- to sleep.

Who is Silvia What is she, That all our swains commend her Holy, fair, and wise is she.

I'll speak in a monstrous little voice.

Thou slave, thou wretch, thou coward!

None that I know will be, much that I fear may chance.

My Lord of Cambridge here-
You know how apt our love was to accord
To furnish him with an appertinents
Belonging to his honour; and this man
Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspir'd,
And sworn unto the practices of France
To kill us here in Hampton; to the which
This knight, no less for bounty bound to us
Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn.

For there was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently.

The good I stand on is my truth and honesty.

One would think his mother's milk were scarce out of him.

What's to come is still unsure In delay there lies no plenty Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure.

That but this blow, Might be the be-all and end end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We'd jump the life to come.

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.

Take that, to end thy agony.

Nothing can seem foul to those who win.

They do not love that do not show their love.

When delicate and feeling souls are separated, there is not a feature in the sky, not a movement of the elements, not an aspiration of the breeze, but hints some cause for a lover's apprehension.

Ay brother, to our grief, as it is yours.

A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman-
Fram'd in the prodigality of nature,
Young, valiant, wise, and no doubt right royal-
The spacious world cannot again afford;
And will she yet abase her eyes on me,
That cropp'd the golden prime of this sweet prince
And made her widow to a woeful bed?

A foe to tyrants, and my country's friend.

The gods do this in shame of cowardice.

O, benefit of ill, now I find true
That better is, by evil still made better;
And ruined love, when it is built anew,
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.

Good morrow, fair ones; pray you, if you know,
Where in the purlieus of this forest stands
A sheep-cote fenc'd about with olive trees?

Faith, I have been a truant in the law
And never yet could frame my will to it;
And therefore frame the law unto my will.

Yet, Derby, notwithstanding she's your wife
And loves not me, be you, good lord, assur'd
I hate not you for her proud arrogance.

Our wills and fates do so contrary runThat our devices still are overthrownOur thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

Or an old lion, or a lover's lute.

Let me speak proudly: tell the Constable
We are but warriors for the working-day;
Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd
With rainy marching in the painful field;
There's not a piece of feather in our host-
Good argument, I hope, we will not fly-
And time hath worn us into slovenry.