William Shakespeare Quotes

This hand shall never more come near thee with such friendship

~ William Shakespeare

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!

~ William Shakespeare

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;Or close the wall up with our English dead!In peace there's nothing so becomes a manAs modest stillness and humility:But when the blast of war blows in our ears,Then imitate the action of the tiger.

~ William Shakespeare

I am afeard there are few die well that die in battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument?

~ William Shakespeare

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage.

~ William Shakespeare

Let me have war, say I: it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it's spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war's a destroyer of men.

~ William Shakespeare

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

~ William Shakespeare

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

~ William Shakespeare

If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended,That you have but slumbered hereWhile these visions did appear.And this weak and idle theme,No more yielding but a dream,Gentles, do not reprehend:If you pardon, we will mend:And, as I am an honest Puck,If we have unearned luckNow to 'scape the serpent's tongue,We will make amends ere long;Else the Puck a liar call;So, good night unto you all.Give me your hands, if we be friends,And Robin shall restore amends.

~ William Shakespeare

True, I talk of dreams,Which are the children of an idle brain,Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,Which is as thin of substance as the air,And more inconstant than the wind, who woos Even now the frozen bosom of the north,And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.

~ William Shakespeare

...and then, in dreaming, / The clouds methought would open and show riches / Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked / I cried to dream again.

~ William Shakespeare

For some must watch, while some must sleep So runs the world away

~ William Shakespeare

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. Methought I was,--and methought I had,--but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom...

~ William Shakespeare

Thought is free.

~ William Shakespeare

O hell! to choose love by another's eye.

~ William Shakespeare

More of your conversation would infect my brain.

~ William Shakespeare

Don Pedro - (...)'In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke.'Benedick - The savage bull may, but if ever the sensible Benedick bear it, pluck off the bull's horns and set them in my forehead, and let me be vildly painted; and in such great letters as they writes, 'Here is good horse for hire', let them signify under my sign, 'Here you may see Benedick the married man.

~ William Shakespeare

- Where is Polonius?- In heaven; send hither to see: if your messenger find him not there, seek him i' the other place yourself.

~ William Shakespeare

There's meaning in thy snores.

~ William Shakespeare

Dispute not with her: she is lunatic.

~ William Shakespeare

If I be waspish, best beware my sting.

~ William Shakespeare

Make the doors upon a woman's wit,and it will out at the casement;shut that, and 'twill out at the key-hole;stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.

~ William Shakespeare

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;They are the books, the arts, the academes,That show, contain and nourish all the world.

~ William Shakespeare

DON PEDROCome, lady, come; you have lost the heart of Signior Benedick.BEATRICEIndeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile; and I gave him use for it, a double heart for his single one: marry, once before he won it of me with false dice, therefore your grace may well say I have lost it.DON PEDROYou have put him down, lady, you have put him down.BEATRICESo I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I should prove the mother of fools.

~ William Shakespeare

Were kisses all the joys in bed,/One woman would another wed.

~ William Shakespeare

Proper deformity shows not in the fiendSo horrid as in woman.

~ William Shakespeare

Why should their liberty than ours be more?

~ William Shakespeare

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

~ William Shakespeare

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 -

~ William Shakespeare

The Devil hath powerTo assume a pleasing shape.

~ William Shakespeare

Friendship is constant in all other thingsSave in the office and affairs of love.Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues.Let every eye negotiate for itself,And trust no agent; for beauty is a witchAgainst whose charms faith melteth into blood.

~ William Shakespeare

O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you. . . .She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comesIn shape no bigger than an agate stoneOn the forefinger of an alderman,Drawn with a team of little atomiAthwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.

~ William Shakespeare

What is your substance, whereof are you made,That millions of strange shadows on you tend?Since everyone hath every one, one shade,And you, but one, can every shadow lend.Describe Adonis, and the counterfeitIs poorly imitated after you.On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,And you in Grecian tires are painted new.Speak of the spring and foison of the year;The one doth shadow of your beauty show,The other as your bounty doth appear,And you in every blessèd shape we know.In all external grace you have some part,But you like none, none you, for constant heart.

~ William Shakespeare

The Brightness of her cheek would shame those stars as daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven would through the airy region stream so bright that birds would sing, and think it were not night.

~ William Shakespeare

Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

~ William Shakespeare

Look on beauty,And you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight;Which therein works a miracle in nature,Making them lightest that wear most of it:So are those crisped snaky golden locksWhich make such wanton gambols with the wind,Upon supposed fairness, often knownTo be the dowry of a second head,The skull that bred them in the sepulchre.Thus ornament is but the guiled shoreTo a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarfVeiling an Indian beauty; in a word,The seeming truth which cunning times put onTo entrap the wisest.

~ William Shakespeare

Beauty itself doth of itself persuadeThe eyes of men without orator.

~ William Shakespeare

O! How much more doth beauty beauteous seem, By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!

~ William Shakespeare

What you doStill betters what is done. When you speak, sweet.I'ld have you do it ever: when you sing,I'ld have you buy and sell so, so give alms,Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs,To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish youA wave o' the sea, that you might ever doNothing but that; move still, still so,And own no other function: each your doing,So singular in each particular,Crowns what you are doing in the present deed,That all your acts are queens.

~ William Shakespeare

A right fair mark, fair coz, is soonest hit.

~ William Shakespeare