William Shakespeare Quotes

When griping grief the heart doth wound, and doleful dumps the mind opresses, then music, with her silver sound, with speedy help doth lend redress.

The violence of either grief or joy, their own enactures with themselves destroy.

My brain more busy than the labouring spider Weaves tedious snares to trap mine enemies.

Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affection, Figures pedantical--these summer flies Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.

I would fain die a dry death.

But men are men; the best sometimes forget.

Nimble thought can jump both sea and land.

Civil dissension is a viperous worm That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth.

And in some perfumes there is more delight than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know that music hath a far more pleasing sound.

Maids want nothing but husbands, and when they have them, they want everything.

Delivers in such apt and gracious words that aged ears play truant at his tales; And younger hearings are quite ravished; So sweet and voluble is his discourse.

Love's best habit is a soothing tongue

I may neither choose who I would, nor refuse who I dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father.

As merry as the day is long.

Hide not thy poison with such sugar'd words

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.

Thou weigh'st thy words before thou givest them breath.

Tis in ourselves that we are thus, or thus.

It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions.

Love is like a child, That longs for everything it can come by

There's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year.

I cannot tell what you and other men Think of this life; but, for my single self, I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a thing as I myself.

An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.

So well thy words become thee as thy wounds.

So get the start of the majestic world And bear the palm alone.

The wound of peace is surety, Surety secure; but modest doubt is called The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches To th' bottom of the worst.

If you love an addle egg as well as you love an idle head, you would eat chickens i' th' shell.

To be furious, is to be frighted out of fear.

He that keeps not crust nor crum Weary of all, shall want some.

When we mean to build, We first survey the plot, then draw the model; And when we see the figure of the house, Then must we rate the cost of the erection.

My cake is dough, but I'll in among the rest, Out of hope of all but my share of the feast.

And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once That makes ingrateful man!

Where the greater malady is fixed, The lesser is scarce felt.

Methinks a father Is at the nuptial of his son a guest That best becomes the table.

Never; he will not: Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety: other women cloy The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry Where most she satisfies.

Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn but I shall have my pocket picked?

Nothing routs us but the villainy of our fears.

Supposition all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes; For treason is but trusted like the fox, Who, ne'er so tame, so cherished and locked up, Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.

Know my name is lost, By treason's tooth bare-gnawn and canker-bit; Yet am I noble as the adversary I come to cope.

And either victory, or else a grave.

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order.

The color of the king doth come and go, Between his purpose and his conscience, Like heralds 'twixt two dreadful battles set: His passion is so ripe, it needs must break.

Dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. And I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.

O, I have suffered With those that I saw suffer!

Extremity is the trier of spirits.

We must be gentle now we are gentlemen.

I am as vigilant as a cat to steal cream.

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But bad mortality o'ersways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost.

It is silliness to live when to live is torment, and then have we a prescription to die when death is our physician.