William Shakespeare Quotes on Man (261 Quotes)

I am as honest as any man living that is an old man and no honester than I.

I hate ingratitude more in a man Than lying, vainness, babbling drunkenness, Or any taint of vice whose strong corruption Inhabits our frail blood.

Disprove this villain, if thou be'st a man.

As from a bear a man would run for life, So fly I from her that would be my wife

For Brutus is an honorable man So are they all, all honorable men.

The perdition of th' athversary hath been very great,
reasonable great; marry, for my part, I think the Duke hath lost
never a man, but one that is like to be executed for robbing a
church- one Bardolph, if your Majesty know the man; his face is
all bubukles, and whelks, and knobs, and flames o' fire; and his
lips blows at his nose, and it is like a coal of fire, sometimes
plue and sometimes red; but his nose is executed and his fire's
out.

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls Who steals my purse steals trash tis something, nothing Twas mine, tis his, and has been slave to thousands But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed.

A plague of sighing and grief It blows a man up like a bladder.

Is not birth, beauty, good
shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth,
liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?

But music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils The motions of his spirit are dull as night And his affections dark as Erebus Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.

This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do.

Why, friends, you go to do you know not what Wherein hath Caesar thus deserved your loves Alas, you know not I must tell you then You have forgot the will I told you of. .... Here is the will, and under Caesar's seal. To every Roman citizen he gives, To every several man, seventy-five drachmas. .... Moreover, he hath left you all his walks, His private arbours and new-planted orchards, On this side Tiber he hath left them you, And to your heirs for ever, common pleasures, To walk abroad, and recreate yourselves. Here was a Caesar when comes such another.

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.

Love, and be friends, as two such men should be;
For I have seen more years, I'm sure, than ye.

Men of few words are the best men.

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.

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

No doubt, my liege, if each man do his best.

I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.

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

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

Art thou thus bolden'd, man, by thy distress?

If that thy gentry, Britain, go before
This lout as he exceeds our lords, the odds
Is that we scarce are men, and you are gods.

Zounds, a dog, a rat, a
mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death!

Too well what love women to men may owe.

He is half of a blessed man. Left to be finished by such as she and she a fair divided excellence, whose fullness of perfection lies in him.

Ay me for aught that I could ever read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth. But, either it was different in blood, Or else it stood upon the choice of friends, Or, if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentany as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold' The jaws of darkness do devour it up So quick bright things come to confusion.

All that glisters is not gold.Often you have heard that toldMany a man his life hath soldBut my outside to beholdGilded tombs do worms enfold.

Nor are mine cars with thy tongue's tune delighted,
Nor tender feeling to base touches prone,
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
To any sensual feast with thee alone;
But my five wits, nor my five senses can
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man,
Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be.

You still shall live-such virtue hath my pen-
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men.

That which ordinary men are fit for, I am qualified in. and the best of me is diligence.

Men should be what they seem.

There's no trust, no faith, no honesty in men all perjured, all forsworn, all naught, all dissemblers.

He is the most wretched of men who has never felt adversity.

So shall thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.

There is none of my uncle's marks upon you; he taught me
how to know a man in love; in which cage of rushes I am sure you
are not prisoner.

It makes a man a coward. . . . It fills a man full of obstacles. It made me once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found. It beggars any man that keeps it. It is turned out of towns and cities for a dangerous thing, and every man that means to live well endeavors to trust to himself and live without it.

There is no man hath a virtue that he hath not a
glimpse of, nor any man an attaint but he carries some stain of
it; he is melancholy without cause and merry against the hair; he
hath the joints of every thing; but everything so out of joint
that he is a gouty Briareus, many hands and no use, or purblind
Argus, all eyes and no sight.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look He thinks too much such men are dangerous. Julius Caesar

Father and mother is man and wife; man and wife is
one flesh; and so, my mother.

Thy noble shape is but a form of wax
Digressing from the valour of a man;
Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury,
Killing that love which thou hast vow'd to cherish;
Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,
Misshapen in the conduct of them both,
Like powder in a skilless soldier's flask,
is get afire by thine own ignorance,
And thou dismemb'red with thine own defence.

I will praise any man that will praise me.

You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both.

But men are men; the best sometimes forget.

God hath blessed you with a good name to be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune, but to write or read comes by nature.

The whole butt, man; my cellar is in a rock by
th' seaside, where my wine is hid.

I have been told so of many; but indeed an old religious
uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an inland
man; one that knew courtship too well, for there he fell in love.

I tell thee what, Antonio-
I love thee, and 'tis my love that speaks-
There are a sort of men whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,
And do a wilful stillness entertain,
With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;
As who should say 'I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips let no dog bark.

All men, I hope, live so.

O Lord, have mercy on me, woeful man!