William Shakespeare Quotes

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.

I think the King is but a man as I am: the violet smells to him as it doth to me.

There is no love-broker in the world can more prevail in man's commendation with woman than report of valor.

Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion

What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven?

Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.

There should be hours for necessities, not for delights; times to repair our nature with comforting repose, and not for us to waste these times.

You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange wife and a fosset-seller.

A knot you are of damned bloodsuckers.

O! she doth teach the torches to burn bright It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear; Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear. - Romeo -

Security is the chief enemy of mortals.

You take my house when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house; you take my life When you do take the means whereby I live.

Men prize the thing ungained more than it is.

Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where.

I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

The will is deaf and hears no heedful friends.

The king hath note of all that they intend, by interception which they dream not of.

Great men may jest with saints; 'tis wit in them; But, in the less foul profanation.

Prosperity's the very bond of love, Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together Affliction alters.

This fell sergeant, Death, Is strict in his arrest.

Here is a rural fellow that will not be denied your Highness' presence: he brings you figs.

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

Night's candles have burned out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintops." Hope tinged with melancholy - like life.

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

I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.

I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

I am a man more sinned against than sinning

I must be cruel, only to be kind.

Come, and take choice of all my library, And so beguile thy sorrow.

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, And vice sometime by action dignified.

And the more pity that great folk should have count'nance in this world to drown or hang themselves more than their even-Christen.

While we lie tumbling in the hay.

I'll note you in my book of memory.

How much an ill word may empoison liking!

After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

I rather would entreat thy company; To see the wonders of the world abroad, Than, living dully sluggardized at home, Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.

And blind oblivion swallowed cities up.

Through tattered clothes great vices do appear; Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold and the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks. Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.

How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green!

The mind of guilt is full of scorpions.

'Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after.

Charity itself fulfills the law. And who can sever love from charity?

He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone; At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone.

Et tu Brute! (You too, Brutus!)

Adversity makes strange bedfellows.

Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light

Let us not burden our remembrances with a heaviness that's gone.

Contention, like a horse, Full of high feeding, madly hath broke loose, And bears down all before him.

You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is, I know how to curse