Shakespeare Quotes

It was wonderful flirting with him, all the razor-edged literary banter, like Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. A battle of wit, and a test, too.

~ Elizabeth Wein

One day at Fenner's (the university cricket ground at Cambridge), just before the last war, G. H. Hardy and I were talking about Einstein. Hardy had met him several times, and I had recently returned from visiting him. Hardy was saying that in his lifetime there had only been two men in the world, in all the fields of human achievement, science, literature, politics, anything you like, who qualified for the Bradman class. For those not familiar with cricket, or with Hardy's personal idiom, I ought to mention that “the Bradman class” denoted the highest kind of excellence: it would include Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Newton, Archimedes, and maybe a dozen others. Well, said Hardy, there had only been two additions in his lifetime. One was Lenin and the other Einstein.

~ C.p. Snow

Can you blame me, my dear, for looking on this attachment as a romantic folly inspired by that cursed Shakespeare who will poke his nose where he is not wanted?

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In reality there is no kind of evidence or argument by which one can show that Shakespeare, or any other writer, is good. Nor is there any way of definitely proving that--for instance--Warwick Beeping is bad. Ultimately there is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion.

~ George Orwell

After Homer and Dante, is a whole century of creating worth one Shakespeare?

~ Dejan Stojanovic

And there was never a better time to delve for pleasure in language than the sixteenth century, when novelty blew through English like a spring breeze. Some twelve thousand words, a phenomenal number, entered the language between 1500 and 1650, about half of them still in use today, and old words were employed in ways not tried before. Nouns became verbs and adverbs; adverbs became adjectives. Expressions that could not have grammatically existed before - such as 'breathing one's last' and 'backing a horse', both coined by Shakespeare - were suddenly popping up everywhere.

~ Bill Bryson

Whate'er I read to her. I'll plead for youAs for my patron, stand you so assured,As firmly as yourself were in still place - Yea, and perhaps with more successful wordsThan you, unless you were a scholar, sir.O this learning, what a thing it is!

~ William Shakespeare

I am alive to a usual objection to what is clearly part of my programme for the metier of poetry. The objection is that the doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition (pedantry), a claim which can be rejected by appeal to the lives of poets in any pantheon. It will even be affirmed that much learning deadens or perverts poetic sensibility. While, however, we persist in believing that a poet ought to know as much as will not encroach upon his necessary receptivity and necessary laziness, it is not desirable to confine knowledge to whatever can be put into a useful shape for examinations, drawing rooms, or the still more pretentious modes of publicity. Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum. What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop this consciousness throughout his career. What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.

~ T.s. Eliot

He is indeed the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart.

~ Washington Irving

Miss Rasputin, what a delight to finally meet you,” said the vamp, speaking with only the faintest hint of an accent.“Let’s hope you still feel that way in a few minutes, Mr. Delacroix.”“Pierre, please. And may I call you Evangaline?” Pierre smiled at her winsomely.“No, you may not. My name is Ms. Rasputin to you.”Her answer took the vamp aback, but he recovered quickly and smiled again showing off his small pointed canines. Pierre’s dark eyes flicked over to Ryker in his feline form and he raised an aristocratic brow. “My, what a big pussy you have.”“You know what they say, the bigger the better.

~ Eve Langlais

And now about the cauldron singLike elves and fairies in a ring,Enchanting all that you put in.

~ William Shakespeare

Do we not each dream of dreams? Do we not dance on the notes of lostmemories? Then are we not each dreamers of tomorrow and yesterday, since dreamsplay when time is askew? Are we not all adrift in the constant sea of trial and when all is done, do we not all yearn for ships to carry us home?

~ Nathan Reese Maher

Call me crazy, but there is something terribly wrong with this city.

~ Nathan Reese Maher

There is a stillness between us, a period of restlessness that ties my stomachin a hangman’s noose. It is this same lack in noise that lives, there! in thedarkness of the grave, how it frightens me beyond all things.

~ Nathan Reese Maher

I can’t help but ask, “Do you know where you are?”She turns to me with a foreboding glare. “Do you?

~ Nathan Reese Maher

Did Bach ever eatpancakes at midnight?

~ Nathan Reese Maher

History doesn’t start with a tall buildingand a card with your name written on it, but jokes do. I think someone is takingus for suckers and is playing a mean game.

~ Nathan Reese Maher

I steal one glance over my shoulder as soon as we are far from the foreboding luminance of the neon glow, and it is there that my stomach leaps into my throat. Squatting just shy of the light and partially concealed by the shade of an alley is a sinister silhouette beneath a crimson cowl, beaming a demonic smile which spans from cheek to swollen cheek.

~ Nathan Reese Maher

She leaves my side and heads deeper intothe apartment singing, “—if the spirit tries to hide, its temple far away… acopper for those they ask, a diamond for those who stay.

~ Nathan Reese Maher

I rouse Emily to our guests, as she finishes off our fifteenth snowman by setting the head atop its torso. She stands limp at my direction, pointing out the coming shadows and I cannot help but hear a muffled sigh as she decapitates her latest creation with a single push of her hand.

~ Nathan Reese Maher

That’s a stupid name! Whirly-gig is much better, I think. Who in their rightmind would point at this thing and say, ‘I’m going to fly in my Model-A1’.People would much rather say, ‘Get in my whirly-gig’. And that’s what youshould name it.

~ Nathan Reese Maher

I want to take a trip to Shakespeare's brain and vacation there with his thoughts may be I also start writing about twisted love and betrayals.

~ Megha Khare

Well, I must do’t. Away, my disposition, and possess me Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turn’d, Which quier’d with my drum, into a pipe Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice That babies lull asleep! The smiles of knaves Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys’ tears take up The glasses of my sight! A beggar’s tongue Make motion through my lips, and my arm’d knees, Who bow’d but in my stirrup, bend like his That hath receiv’d an alms! I will not do’t, Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth, And by my body’s action teach my mind A most inherent baseness.

~ William Shakespeare

Alas, my lord, your wisdom is consumed in confidence.

~ William Shakespeare

I want to have a romance so grand,it would have made Shakespeare fumble for words.

~ Sanober Khan

I began with the desire to speak with the dead.

~ Stephen Greenblatt

I have lived one step away from losing my mind for years. I am quick and accurate in spotting unstable streaks in others.

~ Charlaine Harris

I knew your plan before you made it,” Eldora proclaimed, tossing her Wert from hand to hand… “You are somewhat of a mystery, one of Shakespeare’s cryptic sonnets, I reckon, but some lines are rather…obvious. You would be a terrible king.

~ Mary-Jean Harris

But hear thee, Gratiano:Thou art too wild, too rude, and bold of voice - Parts that become thee happily enough,And in such eyes as ours appear no faults,But where thou art not known, why, there they show Something too liberal.

~ William Shakespeare

The ability for anyone in our generation to self-amuse has sadly been bred out of our species.

~ Kim Askew

Theoretically speaking a good reader should also be a good learner, whatever the century and the place!

~ Carl William Brown

Nine tenths of the ills from which intelligent people suffer spring from their intellect. They need at least a doctor who understands the disease. How can you expect Cottard to be able to treat you? He has made allowances for the difficulty of digesting sauces, for gastric trouble, but he has made no allowance for the effect of reading Shakespeare.

~ Marcel Proust

There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune...” ― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

~ Lisa M. Collins

Affliction is enamoured of thy parts, And thou art wedded to calamity.

~ William Shakespeare

There is no shortage of fault to be found amidst our stars.

~ John Green

There is not shortage of fault to be found amidst our stars.

~ John Green

Are we not all actors playing parts in another person's play?

~ Shannon L. Alder

Shall I compare thee to a Shoggoth?

~ D.r. O'brien

Some there be that shadow kiss, Such have but a shadow's bliss.

~ William Shakespeare

My love, I have tried with all my beingto grasp a form comparable to thine own,but nothing seems worthy;I know now why Shakespeare could notcompare his love to a summer’s day.It would be a crime to denounce the beautyof such a creature as thee,to simply cast away the precisionGod had placed in forging you.Each facet of your beingwhether it physical or spiritualis an ensnarementfrom which there is no release.But I do not wish release.I wish to stay entrapped forever.With you for all eternity.Our hearts, always as one.

~ Anthony Kolos