Shakespeare Quotes

A comedy isn’t about being funny...a comedy is about characters who dare to know that they may choose a happy ending after all.

~ Gary D. Schmidt

He didn't give a shit if Shakespeare didn't have glitter back in his day.

~ Tiffany Ferentini

Well, what do you know? Fakespeare!

~ Hillary Depiano

CREONTA: Rope! My rope! Hang those two thieves by the neck until they are dead.THE ROPE: Alack, but vile and ill-natured female! Upon wherein did thine affections tarry when I didst but lie here and rot for many a year? Nay, but those fellows tooketh care to remove the wetness that didst plagueth me of late and hath laid me upon the cool ground to revel in a state of dryness. Nay, I wouldst not delay them in their noble course for all thine base and bestial howling.CREONTA: Then, you, dearest donkey, precious beast of burden, tear those two apart and eat their flesh!DONKEY: Nay, but alas for many a season didst you but keep the food of the tummy from me and my mouth when it was that I required it of you. These fine gentlemen of fortune didst but give me carrots of which to partake which I did most verily and forthsoothe with merriment. I havest decided that thou dost suck most verily and no longer will I layth the smackth down in thine name but will rather let such gentlemen as these go free of themselves. TRUFFALDINO: [To the audience.] Well, what do you know? Fakespeare!

~ Hillary Depiano

A few people have ventured to imitate Shakespeare's tragedy. But no audacious spirit has dreamed or dared to imitate Shakespeare's comedy. No one has made any real attempt to recover the loves and the laughter of Elizabethan England. The low dark arches, the low strong pillars upon which Shakespeare's temple rests we can all explore and handle. We can all get into his mere tragedy; we can all explore his dungeon and penetrate into his coal-cellar, but we stretch our hands and crane our necks in vain towards that height where the tall turrets of his levity are tossed towards the sky. Perhaps it is right that this should be so; properly understood, comedy is an even grander thing than tragedy.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Happiness was useless to me. It was heartache that filled my purse. What happy man has need of Shakespeare?

~ Jennifer Donnelly

To think, or not to think...This is the true question.

~ Bert Mccoy

There comes a time in a man's life, if he is unlucky and leads a full life, when he has a secret so dirty that he knows he never will get rid of it. (Shakespeare knew this and tried to say it, but he said it just as badly as anyone ever said it. 'All the perfumes of Arabia' makes you think of all the perfumes of Arabia and nothing more. It is the trouble with all metaphors where human behavior is concerned. People are not ships, chess men, flowers, race horses, oil paintings, bottles of champagne, excrement, musical instruments or anything else but people. Metaphors are all right to give you an idea.)

~ John O'hara

I have no spurTo prick the sides of my intent, but onlyVaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itselfAnd falls on the other.

~ William Shakespeare

Ambition should be made from sterner stuff.

~ William Shakespeare

In the State of Denmark there was the odor of decay...

~ Roger Zelazny

Shakespeare was so ahead of his time that people still don't talk that way.

~ Rod Longuestte

At this hourLie at my mercy all mine enemies.

~ William Shakespeare

Hot from hell. Caesar's spirit raging in revenge. Cry,havoc! And let slip the dogs of war.

~ William Shakespeare

I'll find a day to massacre them allAnd raze their faction and their family,The cruel father and his traitorous sons,To whom I sued for my dear son's life,And make them know what 'tis to let a queenKneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain.

~ William Shakespeare

Thou calledst me a dog before thou hadst a cause,But since I am a dog, beware my fangs.

~ William Shakespeare

Work is the undoing of nature.

~ Paul Majkut

My dear Keats go on, don't despair, collect incidents, study characters, read Shakespeare and trust in Providence.

~ Benjamin Haydon

...I know Shakespeare said art is holding up a mirror to nature- but you're actually bending and refracting it through your interior dialogue ...

~ John Geddes

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

We defy augury. There is special providence inthe fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not tocome, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come—thereadiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows what is'tto leave betimes, let be. (Hamlet 5.2.217-224)

~ William Shakespeare

Some are born mad, some achieve madness, and some have madness thrust upon 'em.

~ Emilie Autumn

But these people _announced_ their madness . . . they flaunted their insanity, they weren't half mad and half not, curled around a door frame. They were properly mad in the Shakespearean sense, talking sense when you least expected it.

~ Zadie Smith

They think thee mad? I'll show thou mad, my lord.

~ Phar West Nagle

How stand I, then,That have a father killed, a mother stained,Excitements of my reason and my blood,And let all sleep, while to my shame I seeThe imminent death of twenty thousand menThat for a fantasy and trick of fameGo to their graves like beds, fight for a plotWhereon the numbers cannot try the cause,Which is not tomb enough and continentTo hide the slain? O, from this time forthMy thoughts be bloody or be nothing

~ William Shakespeare

Beshrew your eyes,They have o'erlook'd me and divided me;One half of me is yours, the other half yours,Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,And so all yours.

~ William Shakespeare

If there really is such a thing as turning in one's grave, Shakespeare must get a lot of exercise.

~ George Orwell

I knew exactly when the fever had struck. I had been reading Hamlet in an English class at school. Everyone else stumbled, puzzling over the strange words. Then it had been my turn, and the language had suddenly woken in me, so that my heart and lungs and tongue and throat were on fire. Later, I understood that this was why people spoke of Shakespeare as a god. At the time, I felt like weeping. Somebody had released me from dumbness, from utter isolation. I knew that I could live inside these words, that they would give me a a shape, a shell. I had no idea, then, that I would never play Hamlet…. I’m an actor, and in a good year I earn eleven thousand pounds for dressing up as a carrot.

~ Amanda Craig

ANGELOFrom thee, even from thy virtue!What's this, what's this? Is this her fault or mine?The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?Ha!Not she: nor doth she tempt: but it is IThat, lying by the violet in the sun,Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it beThat modesty may more betray our senseThan woman's lightness? Having waste ground enough,Shall we desire to raze the sanctuaryAnd pitch our evils there? O, fie, fie, fie!What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?Dost thou desire her foully for those thingsThat make her good? O, let her brother live!Thieves for their robbery have authorityWhen judges steal themselves. What, do I love her,That I desire to hear her speak again,And feast upon her eyes? What is't I dream on?O cunning enemy, that, to catch a saint,With saints dost bait thy hook! Most dangerousIs that temptation that doth goad us onTo sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet,With all her double vigour, art and nature,Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maidSubdues me quite. Even till now,When men were fond, I smiled and wonder'd how.-- Measure for Measure, II, ii

~ William Shakespeare

He [Alexander von Humboldt] was to science what Shakespeare was to the drama.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Most people say that Shakespeare rocked merely because most people say that Shakespeare rocked.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world.

~ William Shakespeare

There have only been two geniuses in the world — Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.

~ Tallulah Bankhead

No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.

~ William Shakespeare

I have Shakespeared my Moliere to Tenessee, and I am Wild for Becket! But I got a little tired of the redundancy.

~ Natasha Tsakos

Like water our ideals for writing what seems at first to be a calling to pen a masterpiece, it at first can be pure, fluid even (words can come easily) but we also have to learn to work with what our eyes glaze over as weak substitutes, words that we think have no substance to what we are learning towards. What is every poet's intention? Their intention is to forge, nullify, create, defend, fill the reader with the awe and inspiration that every poet themselves craves. They want to carve a name for themselves in the annals of history, leave a not so quiet legacy behind. Poets want immortality or rather they want their words to become immortal. Perhaps even Marlowe and Shakespeare had discussions about this.

~ Abigail George

I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated.

~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,— For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

~ William Shakespeare

The Weird Sisters, hand in hand,Posters of the sea and land,Thus do go, about, about,Thrice to thine, thrice to mine,And thrice again to make up nine.Peace, the charm's wound up.

~ William Shakespeare

She was wearing a sleeveless top that held her breasts in the most marvelous way, the balance between what it revealed and what it left to the imagination as poetic as a Shakespearean sonnet.

~ E.e. Giorgi