William Shakespeare Quotes (3360 Quotes)



    Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears I come to bury Csar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones So let it be with Csar. The noble Brutus Hath told Csar was ambitious If it were so, it was a grievous fault And grievously hath Csar answerd it.... . For Brutus is an honourable man So are they all, all honourable men.... . He was my friend, faithful and just to me But Brutus says he was ambitious And Brutus is an honourable man.... . When that the poor have cried, Csar hath wept Ambition should be made of sterner stuff .... You all did love him once, not without cause.

    Holy, fair, and wise is she;
    The heaven such grace did lend her,
    That she might admired be.

    Now she unweaves the web that she hath wrought;
    Adonis lives, and Death is not to blame;
    It was not she that call'd him all to naught:
    Now she adds honours to his hateful name;
    She clepes him king of graves and grave for kings,
    Imperious supreme of all mortal things.

    Faith, there have been many great men that have
    flatter'd the people, who ne'er loved them; and there be many
    that they have loved, they know not wherefore; so that, if they
    love they know not why, they hate upon no better a ground.


    The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
    And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,
    In liberty of bloody hand shall range
    With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
    Your fresh fair virgins and your flow'ring infants.

    Gloucester, we have done deeds of charity,
    Made peace of enmity, fair love of hate,
    Between these swelling wrong-incensed peers.

    If I could meet that fancy-monger, I would give
    him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love
    upon him.

    If they make you not then the better answer, you may say they are not the men you took them for.


    He jests at scars that never felt a wound. But, soft what light through yonder window breaks It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.


    But thou art fair, and at thy birth, dear boy,
    Nature and Fortune join'd to make thee great:
    Of Nature's gifts thou mayst with lilies boast,
    And with the half-blown rose; but Fortune, O!


    Welcome, Queen Margaret:
    I can express no kinder sign of love
    Than this kind kiss.


    Here she stands
    Take but possession of her with a touch-
    I dare thee but to breathe upon my love.

    If not to answer, you might haply think
    Tongue-tied ambition, not replying, yielded
    To bear the golden yoke of sovereignty,
    Which fondly you would here impose on me;
    If to reprove you for this suit of yours,
    So season'd with your faithful love to me,
    Then, on the other side, I check'd my friends.

    Piety and fear,
    Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,
    Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,
    Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,
    Degrees, observances, customs and laws,
    Decline to your confounding contraries
    And let confusion live.


    But they'll nor pinch,
    Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' th' mire,
    Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark
    Out of my way, unless he bid 'em; but
    For every trifle are they set upon me;
    Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me,
    And after bite me; then like hedgehogs which
    Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount
    Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I
    All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues
    Do hiss me into madness.

    I do protest I never injur'd thee,
    But love thee better than thou canst devise
    Till thou shalt know the reason of my love;
    And so good Capulet, which name I tender
    As dearly as mine own, be satisfied.

    OCTAVIUS Hes a tried and valiant soldier. ANTONY So is my horse, Octavius and for that I do appoint him store of provender.


    We defy augury. There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'Tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all.

    Shall I compare thee to a summer's day Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

    We make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.


    Beauty itself doth of itself persuade The eyes of man without an orator.

    If you did wed my sister for her wealth,
    Then for her wealth's sake use her with more kindness;
    Or, if you like elsewhere, do it by stealth;
    Muffle your false love with some show of blindness;
    Let not my sister read it in your eye;
    Be not thy tongue thy own shame's orator;
    Look sweet, speak fair, become disloyalty;
    Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger;
    Bear a fair presence, though your heart be tainted;
    Teach sin the carriage of a holy saint;
    Be secret-false.


    Fear no more the heat o the sun, nor the furious winter's rages. Thou thy worldly task hast done, home art gone and taken thy wages.

    For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit,
    Or any of these all, or all, or more,
    Entitled in thy parts, do crownèd sit,
    I make my love engrafted to this store.

    Ceres, most bounteous lady, thy rich leas
    Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and pease;
    Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep,
    And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep;
    Thy banks with pioned and twilled brims,
    Which spongy April at thy hest betrims,
    To make cold nymphs chaste crowns; and thy broom groves,
    Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves,
    Being lass-lorn; thy pole-clipt vineyard;
    And thy sea-marge, sterile and rocky hard,
    Where thou thyself dost air-the Queen o' th' sky,
    Whose wat'ry arch and messenger am I,
    Bids thee leave these; and with her sovereign grace,
    Here on this grass-plot, in this very place,
    To come and sport.

    To you, Antonio,
    I owe the most, in money and in love;
    And from your love I have a warranty
    To unburden all my plots and purposes
    How to get clear of all the debts I owe.

    And do so, love, yet when they have devised
    What strainèd touches rhetoric can lend,
    Thou, truly fair, wert truly sympathized
    In true plain words by thy true-telling friend;
    And their gross painting might be better used
    Where cheeks need blood; in thee it is abused.


    O, how thy worth with manners may I sing,
    When thou art all the better part of me?

    The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
    For that sweet odour which doth in it live.




    But men may construe things after their own fashion, Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.

    The King is now in progress towards Saint Albans,
    With him the husband of this lovely lady;
    Thither go these news as fast as horse can carry them-
    A sorry breakfast for my Lord Protector.

    I grant thou wert not married to my Muse,
    And therefore mayst without attaint o'erlook
    The dedicated words which writers use
    Of their fair subject, blessing every book.

    I am ashamd that women are so simple To offer war where they should kneel for peace.



    The lily I condemnèd for thy hand,
    And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair;
    The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
    One blushing shame, another white despair;
    A third, nor red, nor white, had stol'n of both,
    And to his robbery had annexed thy breath,
    But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth
    A vengeful canker eat him up to death.

    And now this pale swan in her watery nest; Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending.


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