quotes by William Shakespeare

"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."
— William Shakespeare

"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none."
— William Shakespeare

"Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them."
— William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind."
— William Shakespeare

"If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die."
— William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

"It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves."
— William Shakespeare

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages."
— William Shakespeare

"O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father refuse thy name, thou art thyself thou not a montegue, what is montegue? tis nor hand nor foot nor any other part belonging to a man
What is in a name?
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,
So Romeo would were he not Romeo called retain such dear perfection to which he owes without that title,
Romeo, Doth thy name!
And for that name which is no part of thee, take all thyself....
- (Act II, Scene II)"
— William Shakespeare (Romeo And Juliet)

"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come." "
— William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)

"You speak an infinite deal of nothing."
— William Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Act 5, scene 5, 19–28 "
— William Shakespeare (Macbeth)

"My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break."
— William Shakespeare (The Taming of the Shrew)

"My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite."
— William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)

"Lord Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.
Lord Polonius: What is the matter, my lord?
Hamlet: Between who?
Lord Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord."
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
— William Shakespeare

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring barque,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved."
— William Shakespeare (Great Sonnets)

"I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same
food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter
and summer, as a Christian is?

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If
you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the
rest, we will resemble you in that.
- (Act III, Scene I)"
— William Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice)

"Time is very slow for those who wait
Very fast for those who are scared
very long for those who lament
Very short for those who celebrate
But for those who love time is eternal"
— William Shakespeare

"We know what we are, but not what we may be."
— William Shakespeare

"When he shall die, take him and cut him out into little stars and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun."
— William Shakespeare

"Doubt thou the stars are fire. Doubt thou the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar but never doubt I love."
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

"Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."
— William Shakespeare (Measure for Measure)

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
— William Shakespeare

"Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
— William Shakespeare (The Tempest)

"Presume not that I am the thing I was."
— William Shakespeare

"To weep is to make less the depth of grief."
— William Shakespeare

"These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume. (Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene VI )"
— William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)

"Brevity is the Soul of wit."
— William Shakespeare

"By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes. (Act 4, Scene 1)"
— William Shakespeare (Macbeth)

"Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?"
— William Shakespeare

"The earth has music for those who listen."
— William Shakespeare

"The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers."
— William Shakespeare

"The object of Art is to give life a shape."
— William Shakespeare

"Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night."
— William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)

"Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow."
— William Shakespeare

"Conscience doth make cowards of us all."
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

"He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man. He that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him."
— William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)

"My library was dukedom large enough"
— William Shakespeare (The Tempest)

"Hell is empty and all the devils are here."
— William Shakespeare

"To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles? To die, to sleep, no more! and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is air to. 'Tis a consummation devoutely to be wished. To die, to sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream; Aye there's the rub that makes calamity of so long life. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the laws delay, the insolence of office and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes. When he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? For who would Fardels bare to grunt and sweat under a dreary life. But that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose born, no traveller returns, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have then fly to others that we know not of. Thus conscious does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sickeled o'er with the pale cast of thought. And enterprises of great pith and moment, with this regard, their current turn ary, and lose the name of action. Soft you now thy fair Ophelia, Nymph in thy orisions. Be all my sins remembered"
— William Shakespeare

"To die, to sleep -
To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub,
For in this sleep of death what dreams may come..."
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

"Dispute not with her: she is lunatic."
— William Shakespeare (The Tragedy of King Richard III)

"Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps. "
— William Shakespeare (Much Ado About Nothing)

"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go. "
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

"From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day."
— William Shakespeare (Henry V)

"Wisely and slow, they stumble who run fast."
— William Shakespeare (Romeo And Juliet)

"Though this be madness, yet there is method in't."
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

"[Thine:] face is not worth sunburning."
— William Shakespeare (Henry V)