William Shakespeare

Quotes

The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus. Let no such man be trusted.
Our bodies are our gardens to which our wills are gardeners.
He that commends me to mine own content
Commends me to the thing I cannot get.
I do begin to have bloody thoughts.
What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?
Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
There was a star danced, and under that was I born.
If Love be rough with you, be rough with Love, prick Love for pricking, and you beat Love down.
But no perfection is so absolute, That some impurity doth not pollute.
My tongue will tell the anger of mine heart, Or else my heart, concealing it, will break.
He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.
Things are neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so.
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everyone else.
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Action is eloquence.
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely players.
I must be cruel, only to be kind.
Love looks not with thine eyes, but with thine mind,
Therefore is win'd Cupid painted blind.
Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.
I wasted time, now time doth waste me.
If rough be love with you, be rough with love.
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity, but I know none, therefore am no beast.
The course of true love was never easy.
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions.
Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.
I am wealthy in my friends.
For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,

Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.
Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs, Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes, Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall and a preserving sweet.
When lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.
From this day forward until the end of the world...we in it shall be remembered...we band of brothers.
How my achievements mock me!
The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness And in the taste confounds the appetite.
As many arrows, loosed several ways, come to one mark... so may a thousand actions, once afoot, end in one purpose.
If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.
What's done cannot be undone.
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.
A man I am cross'd with adversity.
Young in limbs, in judgement old.
My salad days, when I was green in judgement, cold in blood.
Let me not live, after my flame lacks oil, to be the snuff of younger spirits.
Crabbed age and youth cannot live together.
You shall more command with years than with your weapons.
An old man is twice a child.
The old folk, time's doting chronicles.
My age is as a lusty winter, frosty, but kindly.
Thou hast nor youth nor age, but, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, dreaming on both.
The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
I hold ambition of so light a quality that is is but a shadow's shadow.
Virtue is choked with foul ambition.
I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, and falls on the other.
Lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend
Ambition, the soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than gain which darkens him.
Ornament is but the guiled shore to a most dangerous sea.
I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
O, what may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!
There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on his outward parts.
Was ever book containing such vile matter so fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell in such a gorgeous palace!
Fair is foul, and foul is fair.
He takes false shadows for true substances.
Gardener, for telling me these news of woe, pray God the plants thou graft'st may never grow.
Though it be honest, it is never good to bring bad news: give to a gracious message an host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell themselves when they be felt.
Look on beauty, and you shall see 'tis purchased by the weight.
Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good;
A shining gloss that vadeth suddenly;
A flower that dies when first it 'gins to bud;
A brittle glass that's broken presently:
A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,
Lost, vaded, broken, dead within the hour.
Show me a mistress that is passing fair, what doth her beauty serve but as a note where I may read who pass'd that passing fair?
Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.
'Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud; but, God He knows, thy share thereof is small.
Those that she makes fair she scarce makes honest; and those that she makes honest she makes very ill-favouredly.
Sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
O, she is rich in beauty, only poor that, when she dies, with beauty dies her store.
How much more doth beauty beauteous seem by that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we'll not fail.
How far your eyes may pierce, i cannot tell; striving to better, oft we mar what's well.
I am a man more sinn'd against than sinning.
Blow, blow, thou winter wind! Thou art not so unkind as Man's ingratitude.
Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it?
Trust not him that has once broken faith.
Vows were ever brokers to defiling.
When he is best, he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is a little better than a beast.
I am constant as the northern star, of whose true fix'd and resting quality there is no fellow in the firmament.
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
My ventures are not in one bottom trusted, nor to one place.
Do not cast away an honest man for a villain's accusation.
But to my mind, though I am native here and to the manner born, it is a custom more honour'd in breach than the observance.
Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water.
The common curse of mankind,-folly and ignorance.
Foolery... does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere.
A stirring dwarf we do allowance give before a sleeping giant.
Purpose is but the slave to memory, of violent birth, but poor validity.
Conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.
I know myself know; and I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.
To do a great right, do a little wrong.
Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers come to dust.
A man can die but once.
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?
Ah, what a sign it is of evil life, where death's approach is seen so terrible!
Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.
When beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
The sense of death is most in apprehension; and the poor beetle, that we tread upon, in corporal sufferance feels a pang as great as when a giant dies.
When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine, that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun.
Blow, wind! Come, wrack! At least we'll die with harness on our back.
Men at some time are the masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us.
O fortune, fortune! All men call thee fickle.
There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.
Things without all remedy should be without regard: What's done is done.
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
Let Hercules himself do what he may, the cat will mew, and dog will have his day.
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to heaven.
Though fortunes malice overthrow my state, my mind exceeds the compass of her wheel.
Fortune, that arrant whore, ne'er turns the key to the poor.
He must needs go that the devil drives.
He will give the devil his due.
O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil!
[Drink] provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.
O God, that man should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily... is wasteful and ridiculous excess
They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they starve with nothing.
Can one desire too much of a good thing?
There's no bottom, none, in my voluptuousness: Your wives, your daughters, your matrons and your maids, could not fill up the cistern of my lust.
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice: Then must you speak of one that loved not wisely but too well.
Distribution should undo excess, and each man have enough.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; for the apparel oft proclaims the man.
The glass of fashion and the mould of form
Thou art not for the fashion of these times, where none will sweat but for promotion.
The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.
Best safety lies in fear.
Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.
In the night, imagining some fear, how easy is a bush suppos'd a bear!
Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.
His flight was madness: when our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors.
To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength, gives in your weakness strength unto your foe.
The quality of mercy is not strain'd, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blest: It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
No ceremony that to great ones 'longs, not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, the marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe, become them with one half so good a grace as mercy does.
Mercy is not itself, that oft looks so
There is a devilish mercy in the judge, if you'll implore it, that will free your life, but fetter you till death.
Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill.
O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Oft expectations fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits
Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.
Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp'd, doth burn the heart to cinders where it is.
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
The miserable have no other medicine, but only hope.
It easeth some, though none it ever cured, to think their dolour others have endured.
A heavy heart bears not a nimble tongue.
If there were reason for these miseries, then into limits could I bind my woes.
How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feelings as to sight?
Yet I do fear thy nature; it is too full o' the milk of human kindness.
There is no fettering of authority.
Poor and content is rich, and rich enough; but riches fineless is as poor as winter to him that ever that ever fears he shall be poor.
Our purses shall be proud, our garments poor; for 'tis the mind that makes the body rich
Present mirth hath present laughter; what's to come is still unsure.
A merry heart goes all the day, your sad tires in a mile-a.
Frame your mind to mirth and merriment, which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.
Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!
We must not make a scarecrow of the law, setting it up to fear the birds of prey, and let it keep one shape, till custom make it their perch and not their terror.
Do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.
The world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open.
I am sure care's an enemy to life.
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
And so from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, and then, from hour to hour,we rot and rot; and thereby hangs a tale.
The cloud-capp'd towers,the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
For aught that I could ever read, could ever hear by tale or history, the course of true love never did run smooth.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments: love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove :
O, no! it is an ever fixed mark.
Perdition catch my soul, but I do love thee! and when I love thee not, Chaos is come again.
O, then, what graces in my love do dwell, that he hath turn'd a heaven unto hell!
O, how this spring of love resembleth the uncertain glory of an April day!
Some cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Love is blind, and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit.
If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.
If love be blind, it best agrees with night.
What power is it which mounts my love so high, that makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red...

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
Things base and vile, holding no quantity, love can transpose to form and dignity.
Speak low if you speak love.
I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at.
Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boist'rous, and it pricks like a thorn.
The hind that would be mated by the lion must die for love.
Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.
She cannot love, nor take no shape nor project or affection, she is so self-endeared.
Love lacked a dwelling, and made him her place;
And when in his fair parts she did abide,
She was lodged and newly deified.
But the strong base and building of my love is as the very centre of the earth, drawing all things to it.
All fancy-sick she is and pale of cheer, with sighs of love, that costs the fresh blood dear.
By heaven, I do love: and it hath taught me to rhyme, and to be mekancholy.
And ruin'd love when it is built anew,
Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater.
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes...
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange
That even our loves should with our fortunes change.
For 'tis a question left us yet to prove,
Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
The chameleon Love can feed on the air.
Love's best habit is a soothing tongue.
There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong, to love that well which thou must leave ere long.
My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
My love admits no qualifying dross.
Alas, their love may be call'd appetite. No motion of the liver, but the palate.
Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?
The ostentation of our love, which, left unshown, is often left unloved.
My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming;
I love not less, though less the show appear:
That love is merchandised whose rich esteeming
The owner's tongue doth publish every where.
Doubt that the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; where little fear grows great, great love grows there.
Against love's fire fear's frost hath dissolution.
Love thrives not in the heart that shadows dreadeth.
Friendship is constant in all other things
Save 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.
If they love they know not why, they hate upon no better ground, they hate upon no better a ground.
Love's reason's without reason.
The expedition of my violent love outrun the pauser, reason.
Ask me no reason why I love you; for though Love use Reason for his physician, he admits him not for his counsellor.
My reason, the physician to my love, angry that his prescriptions are not kept, hath left me.
But miserable most, to love unloved? This you should pity rather than despise.
Belike you thought our love would last too long, if it were chain'd together.
If that the world and love were young,
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move
To live with thee and be thy love.
Love is begun by time; and that I see in passages of proof, time qualifies the spark and fire of it. There lives within the very flame of love a kind of wick or snuff that will abate it.
Now my love is thaw'd; which, like a waxen image 'gainst a fire, bears no impression of the thing it was.
Even as one heat another heat expels, or as one nail by strength drives out another, so the remembrance of my former love is by a newer object quite forgotten.
When love begins to sicken and decay, it useth an enforced ceremony.
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were decievers ever,-
One foot in the sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
There's daggers in men's smiles.
Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
His life was gentle, and the elements so mix'd in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world 'This was a man!'
What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Art thou a man? thy form cries out thou art:
Thy tears are womanish; thy wild acts denote
The unreasonable fury of a beast:
Unseemly woman in a seeming man!
Or ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!
He is the half part of a blessed man,
Left to be finished by such as she;
And she a fair divided excellence,
Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.
How ever do we praise ourselves, our fancies are more giddy and uniform, more longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, than women's are.
I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.
Men have marble, women waxen, minds.
Men's vows are women's traitors!
Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my hearts core.
Though men can cover crimes with bold stern looks, poor women's faces are their own faults' books.
Women may fall when there's no strength in men.
A woman impudent and mannish grown is not more loathed than an effeminate man in time of action.
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.
Women being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the walls.
Have you not heard it said full oft, a woman's nay doth stand for naught.
To be slow in words is a woman's only virtue.
How hard it is for women to keep counsel!
I thank God I am not a woman, to be touched in so many giddy offences as He hath generally taxed their whole their whole sex withal.
Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go.
We are not ourselves when nature, being oppress'd, commands the mind to suffer with the body.
How comes it, that thou art then estranged from thyself?
That way madness lies.
Were such things here as we do speak about? Or have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?
Matter and impertinency mix'd! Reason in madness!
Her madness hath the oddest frame of sense, such a dependency of thing on thing, as e'er I heard in madness.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow...
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread.
A woman mov'd is like a fountain troubled, muddy,
ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.
The ancient saying is no heresy, hanging and wiving goes by destiny.
[Marriage is] a world-without-end bargain.
Men are April when they woo, December when they wed: maids are may when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.
I will fasten on this sleeve of thine: thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine.
O curse of marriage, that we can call these delicate creatures ours, and not their appetites.
By this marriage, all little jealousies, which now seem great , and all great fears, which now import their dangers would then be nothing.
Though I want a kingdom, yet in marriage I may not prove inferior to yourself.
If there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another...upon familiarity will grow more contempt.
I have wedded her, not bedded her; and sworn to make the 'not' eternal.
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many things I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste.
Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death the memory be green.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor wars quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
I would forget it fain; But, O, it presses to my memory, like damned guilty deeds to a sinners mind.
O sovereign mistress of true melancholy.
The moist star, upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands.
The moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle that's curded by the frost from purest snow.
What may this mean, that thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon?
The fortune of us that are the moon's men doth ebb and flow like the sea, being governed, as the sea is, by the moon.
The moon, like to a silver bow, new-bent in heaven.
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid are far more fair than she.
Swear not by the moon, th' inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circled orb, lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
The moon's an arrant theif, and her pale fire she snatches from the sun.
It is the very error of the moon: She comes more nearer earth than she was wont, and makes men mad.
Ingratitude is monstrous, and for the multitude to be ingrateful, were to make a monster of the multitude.
He's loved of the distracted multitude, who like not in their judgement, but their eyes.
The fool multitude, that choose by show, not learning more than the fond eye doth teach.
The beast with many heads butts me away.
The common herd.
If music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die.
Music, moody food of us that trade in love.
I can sing, and speak to him in many sorts of music.
Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze
By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.
To know the cause why music was ordain'd! Was it not to refresh the mind of a man after his studies or his usual pain?
In sweet music is such art: killing care and grief of heart fall asleep, or hearing, die.
Though music oft hath such a charm to make bad good, and good provoke to harm.
Nature does require her times of preservation.
Winter, which, being full of care, makes summer's welcome thrice more wish'd, more rare.
Under the greenwood tree who loves to lie with me ... Here shall he see no enemy but winter and rough weather.
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time, when birds do sing... sweet lovers love the spring.
Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Why, this is very midsummer madness.
That time of year thou may'st in me behold,
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,-
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York,
And all the clouds that loured upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
A very little thief of occasion will rob you of a great deal of patience.
Patience is sottish, and impatience does become a dog that's mad.
I do oppose my patience to his fury, and am arm'd to suffer with a quietness of spirit, the very tyranny and rage of his.
Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience.
How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?
Though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod.
Had it pleas'd heaven to try me with affliction... I should have found in some place of my soul a drop of patience.
A high hope for a low heaven: God grant us patience!
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unus'd.
Every why hath a wherefore.
His reasons are as two grains of wheat his in two bushels of chaff: you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.
Do not banish reason for inequality; but let your reason serve to make the truth appear where it seems hid, and hide the false seems true.
Many that are not mad have, sure, more lack of reason.
Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation; that away, men are but gilded loam or painted clay.
Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, the death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast.
O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her and be her sense but as a monument, thus in a chapel lying.
A great perturbation in nature, to receive at once the benefit of sleep and do the effects of watching!
Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit, and look on death itself.
Methought I heard a voice cry, "Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep!"- the innocent sleep.
O sleep, O gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, that thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, and steep my senses in forgetfulness.
Sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow's eye, steal me awhile from mine own company.
Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie;
But where unbruised youth with unstuff'd brain
Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign.
He that sleeps feels not the tooth-ache.
Men of few words are the best men.
I do know of these that... only are reputed wise for saying nothing.
Talkers are no good doers; be assur'd we come to use our hands and not our tongues.
Be check'd for silence, but never tax'd for speech.
How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.
I do not speak to thee in drink but in tears, not in pleasure but in passion, not in words only, but in woes also.
Weighest thy words before thou givest them breath.
Things are often spoke and seldom meant.
Be it art or hap, he hath spoken true.
Though thou speak'st truth, methink thou speak'st not well.
There is left us ourselves to end ourselves.
So every bondman in his own hand bears the power to cancel his captivity.
Is it sin to rush into the secret house of death, ere death dare come to us?
Against self-slaughter there is a prohibition so divine that cravens my weak hand.
See what a ready tongue suspicion hath!
My heart suspects more than mine eye can see.
Bid Suspicion double-lock the door.
Make not your thoughts your prisons.
But thought's the slave of life, and life time's fool.
There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried.
My thoughts are whirled like a potter's wheel.
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom and ever three parts coward.
Call home thy ancient thoughts from banishment.
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end.
The whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
Time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arm outstretch'd, as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer.
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devour'd
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon as done.
Time's the king of men; he's both their parent, and he is their grave, and gives them what he will, not what they crave.
Time's glory is to calm contending kings, To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light, To stamp the seal of time in aged things, To wake the morn of sentinel the night, To wrong the wronger till he render right, To ruinate proud buildings with thy hour And smear with dust their glittering golden towers.
Nothing 'gainst Times scythe can make defence.
Ruin has taught me to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
The extreme parts of time extremely forms all causes to the purpose of his speed.
Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.
Short time seems long in sorrow's sharp sustaining.
The time is out of joint : O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!
I wasted time and now doth time waste me.
Truth is truth to the end of reckoning.
But wonder on, till truth makes all things plain.
They breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
Truth will come to light ... at the length, the truth will out.
While you live tell truth and shame the devil.
But 'tis strange and oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray's in deepest consequence.
Against my soul's pure truth why labour you to make it wander in an unknown field?
The better part of valour is discretion.
When valour preys on reason, it eats the sword it fights with.
'Tis much he dares; and, to that dauntless temper of his mind, he hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour to act in safety.
Thy wish was father... to that thought.
If wishes would prevail with me, my purpose should not fail with me.
Where nothing wants that want itself doth seek.
Wishers were ever fools.
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature.
If it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul.
He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.
Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.
Exit, pursued by a bear.
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie.
Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none.
This above all: to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day; Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Have more than thou showest; Speak less than thou knowest.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend; And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry [economy].
Costly thy habit [dress] as thy purse can buy; But not expressed in fancy - rich, not gaudy. For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
We are advertis'd by our loving friends.
Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.
The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.
If all the year were playing holidays; To sport would be as tedious as to work.
Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.
Do not, for one repulse, forego the purpose that you resolved to effect.
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.
Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently. For in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.
Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
O that a man might know the end of this day's business ere it come!
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Simply the thing that I am shall make me live.
Life is a tale told by an idiot -- full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth;
But like of each thing that in season grows.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
It is meant that noble minds keep ever with their likes; for who so firm that cannot be seduced.
Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest; and despair most sits.
He is not great who is not greatly good.
Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; the thief doth fear each bush an officer.
There is a history in all men's lives.
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
It is the mind that makes the body rich; and as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, so honor peereth in the meanest habit.
Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country, as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court.
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
Each present joy or sorrow seems the chief.
In false quarrels there is no true valor.
Strong reasons make strong actions.
Our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Gold is worse poison to a man's soul, doing more murders in this loathsome world, than any mortal drug.
It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.
We know what we are, but not what we may be.
I had rather have a fool make me merry, than experience make me sad.
I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest, for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting.
To thine own self be true -; And it must follow as the night the day; Thou canst not be false to any man
All's well that ends well....
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies.
Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.
Life is but a walking Shadow, a poor Player That struts and frets his Hour upon the Stage, And then is heard no more; It is a tall Tale, Told by an Idiot, full of Sound and Fury, Signifying nothing."
Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none.
Love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better.
I would fain die a dry death.
Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground.
What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?
I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated
To closeness and the bettering of my mind.
Like one
Who having into truth, by telling of it,
Made such a sinner of his memory,
To credit his own lie.
My library
Was dukedom large enough.
Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me
From mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom.
From the still-vexed Bermoothes.
I will be correspondent to command, And do my spiriting gently.
Fill all thy bones with aches.
Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Courtsied when you have, and kiss'd
The wild waves whist.
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
The fringed curtains of thine eye advance.
There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple:
If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
Good things will strive to dwell with 't.
A very ancient and fish-like smell.
He that dies pays all debts.
A kind
Of excellent dumb discourse.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip's bell I lie.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now,
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.
I have no other but a woman's reason:
I think him so, because I think him so.
O, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day!
O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible,
As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple.
That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man,
If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.
How use doth breed a habit in a man!
Come not within the measure of my wrath.
I will make a Star-chamber matter of it.
It is a familiar beast to man, and signifies love.
If there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another: I hope, upon familiarity will grow more contempt.
Thou art the Mars of malcontents.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
We burn daylight.
Why, then the world's mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.
This is the short and the long of it.
We have some salt of our youth in us.
I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.
Your hearts are mighty, your skins are whole.
This is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers.... There is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death.
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.
The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.
The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good.
Truth is truth
To the end of reckoning.
They say, best men are moulded out of faults,
And, for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad.
What's mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.
Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.
He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat.
Friendship is constant in all other things
Save 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.
Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much.
I thank God I am as honest as any man living that is an old man and no honester than I.
A man in all the world's new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain.
He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.
They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it.
For aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth.
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
When he is best, he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast.
My meaning in saying he is a good man, is to have you understand me that he is sufficient.
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
It is a wise father that knows his own child.
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
The little foolery that wise men have makes a great show.
Hereafter, in a better world than this,
I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.
I met a fool i' the forest,
A motley fool.
True is it that we have seen better days.
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts...
No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en;
In brief, sir, study what you most affect.
No legacy is so rich as honesty.
Praising what is lost
Makes the remembrance dear.
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour!
If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.
What's gone and what's past help
Should be past grief.
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror.
This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,--
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work.
He hath eaten me out of house and home.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
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 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.
There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things.
The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful day
Is crept into the bosom of the sea.
And many strokes, though with a little axe,
Hew down and fell the hardest-timbered oak.
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York,
And all the clouds that loured upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments,
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them,--
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun.
An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told.
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings;
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.
A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
'T is better to be lowly born,
And range with humble livers in content,
Than to be perked up in a glistering grief,
And wear a golden sorrow.
The end crowns all,
And that old common arbitrator, Time,
Will one day end it.
Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
A plague o' both your houses!
Every man has his fault, and honesty is his.
We have seen better days.
Beware the ides of March.
Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
But, for my own part, it was Greek to me.
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
Et tu, Brute!
How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents yet unknown!
Cry "Havoc," and let slip the dogs of war.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence.
Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness.
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
The attempt and not the deed
Confounds us.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks!
Out, damned spot! out, I say!
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"
A little more than kin, and less than kind.
Frailty, thy name is woman!
He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.
Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honoured in the breach than the observance.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,
To prick and sting her.
Every man has business and desire,
Such as it is.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!
The devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape.
The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep:
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,--'t is a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go.
I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another.
O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel.
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale?
Polonius: Very like a whale.
O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon 't,
A brother's murder.
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
I must be cruel, only to be kind:
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.
For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard...
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now; your gambols, your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.
A hit, a very palpable hit.
The rest is silence.
Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince:
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
Although the last, not least.
Nothing will come of nothing.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!
Oh, that way madness lies; let me shun that.
The worst is not
So long as we can say, "This is the worst."
Pray you now, forget and forgive.
The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us.
I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at.
I am not merry; but I do beguile
The thing I am, by seeming otherwise.
Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul,
But I do love thee! and when I love thee not,
Chaos is come again.
Speak to me as to thy thinkings,
As thou dost ruminate, and give thy worst of thoughts
The worst of words.
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.
He that is robb'd, not wanting what is stolen,
Let him not know 't, and he's not robb'd at all.
O, now, for ever
Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!
Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
And, O you mortal engines, whose rude throats
The immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit,
Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone!
I understand a fury in your words,
But not the words.
'Tis neither here nor there.
My salad days,
When I was green in judgment.
Small to greater matters must give way.
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety.
Since Cleopatra died,
I have liv'd in such dishonour that the gods
Detest my baseness.
I have
Immortal longings in me.
The game is up.
No, 'tis slander,
Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue
Outvenoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath
Rides on the posting winds, and doth belie
All corners of the world.
I have not slept one wink.
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste.
Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments: love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.
Cursed be he that moves my bones.
O, I am slain!
I like this place, and willingly would waste my time in it.
To be a well-flavored man is the gift of fortune, but to write or read comes by nature.
Oh God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!
Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.
There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.
What a deformed thief this fashion is.
The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
But love is blind and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit;
For if they could, Cupid himself would blush
To see me thus transformed to a boy.
Though inclination be as sharp as will,
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect.
In a false quarrel there is no true valour.
Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till by broad spreading it disperses to naught.
Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.
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.
See first that the design is wise and just: that ascertained, pursue it resolutely; do not for one repulse forego the purpose that you resolved to effect.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.
Sweet are the uses of adversity, which, like a toad, though ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head.
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end.
While thou livest keep a good tongue in thy head.
You cram these words into mine ears against the stomach of my sense.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.
Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.
Their understanding
Begins to swell and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shores
That now lie foul and muddy.
We do not keep the outward form of order, where there is deep disorder in the mind.
How poor are they who have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees.
Virtue and genuine graces in themselves speak what no words can utter.
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters...
Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.
The soul of this man is in his clothes.
It is not enough to help the feeble up, but to support him after.
Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word.
Blow, blow, thou winter wind
Thou art not so unkind,
As man's ingratitude.
How use doth breed a habit in a man.
I wish you well and so I take my leave,
I Pray you know me when we meet again.
Lady you bereft me of all words,
Only my blood speaks to you in my veins,
And there is such confusion in my powers.
Mine honour is my life; both grow in one; take honour from me and my life is done.
Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear.
Thy words, I grant are bigger, for I wear not, my dagger in my mouth.
For they are yet ear-kissing arguments.
I must be cruel only to be kind;
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.
Thou art all the comfort,
The Gods will diet me with.
I pray thee cease thy counsel,
Which falls into mine ears as profitless
as water in a sieve.
Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With old odd ends, stol'n forth of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.
So may he rest, his faults lie gently on him!
His life was gentle; and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up,
And say to all the world, THIS WAS A MAN!
When we are born, we cry, that we are come
To this great stage of fools.
He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself.
I pray you bear me henceforth from the noise and rumour of the field, where I may think the remnant of my thoughts in peace, and part of this body and my soul with contemplation and devout desires.
Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood.
A wretched soul, bruised with adversity,
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;
But were we burdened with like weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain.
I am not bound to please thee with my answers.
Be great in act, as you have been in thought.
The peace of heaven is theirs that lift their swords, in such a just and charitable war.
I hate ingratitude more in a man
than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,
or any taint of vice whose strong corruption
inhabits our frail blood.
Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge of thine own cause.
Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger
constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,
garnish'd and deck'd in modest compliment,
not working with the eye without the ear,
and but in purged judgement trusting neither?
Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility.
I did never know so full a voice issue from so empty a heart: but the saying is true 'The empty vessel makes the greatest sound'.
The trust I have is in mine innocence,
and therefore am I bold and resolute.
The sands are number'd that make up my life.
And since you know you cannot see yourself,
so well as by reflection, I, your glass,
will modestly discover to yourself,
that of yourself which you yet know not of.
God bless thee; and put meekness in thy mind, love, charity, obedience, and true duty!
Courage mounteth with occasion.
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me;
And if I die no soul will pity me:
And wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?
Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books; but love from look, toward school with heavy looks.
What the great ones do, the less will prattle of
Let the coming hour overflow with joy, and let pleasure drown the brim.
If music be the food of love, play on.
In time we hate that which we often fear.
To be wise and love exceeds man's might.
I dote on his very absence.
Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.
To be, or not to be: that is the question.
Though I am not naturally honest, I am sometimes by chance.
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
Such men as he be never at heart's ease whiles they behold a greater than themselves, and therefore are they very dangerous.
This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
Boldness be my friend.
With the sleep of dreams comes nightmares.
Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.
Parting is such sweet sorrow.
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.
If I lose mine honour, I lose myself.
It's not enough to speak, but to speak true.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.
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.
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.
Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.
If thou rememb'rest not the slightest folly into which love hast made thee run, though hast not loved.
Like as the waves make towards
the pebbl'd shore, so do our minutes hasten to their end.
This above all: to thine own self be true.
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.