William Shakespeare Quotes (3360 Quotes)

'Tis love you cavil at; I am not Love.

Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.

O, courage, courage, courage, Princes!

Nay, if the gentle spirit of moving words
Can no way change you to a milder form,
I'll woo you like a soldier, at arms' end,
And love you 'gainst the nature of love- force ye.

Now follows, that you know, young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth,
Or thinking by our late dear brother's death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleagued with this dream of his advantage,
He hath not fail'd to pester us with message
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bands of law,
To our most valiant brother.

A man may be too confident.

You lie, up to the hearing of the gods.

As there comes light from heaven and words from breath, As there is sense in truth and truth in virtue,

Things base and vile, holding no quantity, love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eye, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

I am myself indifferent honest.

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp, To guard a title that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

Then I love thee
Because thou art a woman and disclaim'st
Flinty mankind, whose eyes do never give
But thorough lust and laughter.

My good friends, I'll leave you till night.

And to poor we
Thine enmity's most capital: thou bar'st us
Our prayers to the gods, which is a comfort
That all but we enjoy.

O death, made proud with pure and princely beauty!

Nature teaches beasts to know their friends.

Faith, that's with watching; 'twill away again.

Speak low, if you speak love.

Love to faults is always blind, always is to joy inclined. Lawless, winged, and unconfined, and breaks all chains from every mind.

My brother killed no man-his fault was thought,
And yet his punishment was bitter death.

Remuneration O that's the Latin word for three farthings.

By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God
a death.

My joy is death-
Death, at whose name I oft have been afeard,
Because I wish'd this world's eternity.

I have seen the dumb men throng to see him and
The blind to hear him speak; matrons flung gloves,
Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers,
Upon him as he pass'd; the nobles bended
As to Jove's statue, and the commons made
A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts.

The more pity that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.

But if you would consider the true cause
Why all these fires, why all these gliding ghosts,
Why birds and beasts from quality and kind,
Why old men, fools, and children calculate,
Why all these things change from their ordinance,
Their natures, and preformed faculties
To monstrous quality, why, you shall find
That heaven hath infused them with these spirits
To make them instruments of fear and warning
Unto some monstrous state.

Faith, that was not so well; yet would I knew
That stroke would prove the worst!

Did my heart love till now Forswear it, sight, For I never saw true beauty till this night.

If you be King, why should not I succeed?

And she's fair I love.

Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.

Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.

Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up To such a sudden flood of mutiny. They that have done this deed are honourable What private griefs they have, alas I know not, That made them do it they are wise and honourable, And will no doubts wit.

Th' ambition in my love thus plagues itself:
The hind that would be mated by the lion
Must die for love.

Warwick, these words have turn'd my hate to love;
And I forgive and quite forget old faults,
And joy that thou becom'st King Henry's friend.

I am old and foolish.

Capulet, Montage,
See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love!

Youthful rashness skips like a hare over the meshes of good counsel.

So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon,
Unlooked on diest, unless thou get a son.

Master Brook; but the peaking cornuto her
husband, Master Brook, dwelling in a continual 'larum of
jealousy, comes me in the instant of our, encounter, after
we had embrac'd, kiss'd, protested, and, as it were, spoke
the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a rabble of his
companions, thither provoked and instigated by his
distemper, and, forsooth, to search his house for his wife's
love.

Now if you have a station in the file,
Not i' the worst rank of manhood, say it,
And I will put that business in your bosoms
Whose execution takes your enemy off,
Grapples you to the heart and love of us,
Who wear our health but sickly in his life,
Which in his death were perfect.

O God methinks it were a happy life, To be no better than a homely swain To sit upon a hill, as I do now, To carve out dials, quaintly, point by point, Thereby to see the minutes how they run, How many make the hour full complete How many hours bring about the day How many days will finish up the year How many years a mortal man may live.

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;
Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.

Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made.

O what a rogue and peasant slave I am.

That daughter there of Spain, the Lady Blanch,
Is niece to England; look upon the years
Of Lewis the Dauphin and that lovely maid.

Write till your ink be dry, and with your tears Moist it again, and frame some feeling line That may discover such integrity.