William Shakespeare Quotes - Page 17

In the old age black was not counted fair,Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name.But now is black beauty’s successive heir,And beauty slandered with a bastard shame.For since each hand hath put on nature’s pow'r,Fairing the foul with art’s false borrowed face,Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bow'r,But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seemAt such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,Sland'ring creation with a false esteem.  Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe,  That every tongue says beauty should look so.
William Shakespeare
Beauty itself doth of itself persuadeThe eyes of men without orator.
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
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
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
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
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
The Devil hath powerTo assume a pleasing shape.
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
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
William Shakespeare
Why should their liberty than ours be more?
William Shakespeare
Proper deformity shows not in the fiendSo horrid as in woman.
William Shakespeare
Were kisses all the joys in bed,/One woman would another wed.
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
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
If I be waspish, best beware my sting.
William Shakespeare
Dispute not with her: she is lunatic.
William Shakespeare
There's meaning in thy snores.
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
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
More of your conversation would infect my brain.
William Shakespeare
O hell! to choose love by another's eye.
William Shakespeare
Thought is free.
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, ifthe 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
For some must watch, while some must sleep So runs the world away
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
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
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
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
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
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
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
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
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!
William Shakespeare
This hand shall never more come near thee with such friendship
William Shakespeare
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;But do not dull thy palm with entertainmentOf each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade.
William Shakespeare
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,All losses are restored and sorrows end.
William Shakespeare
I have unclasp'd to thee the book even of my secret soul.
William Shakespeare
Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core, in my heart of heart, as I do thee.
William Shakespeare
Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find.
William Shakespeare
...what care I for words? Yet words do wellWhen he that speaks them pleases those that hear.
William Shakespeare
Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens to the which our wills are gardeners.
William Shakespeare
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;This sensible warm motion to becomeA kneaded clod; and the delighted spiritTo bathe in fiery floods, or to resideIn thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,And blown with restless violence round aboutThe pendent world; or to be worse than worstOf those that lawless and incertain thoughtImagine howling: 'tis too horrible!The weariest and most loathed worldly lifeThat age, ache, penury and imprisonmentCan lay on nature is a paradiseTo what we fear of death.
William Shakespeare
O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?And shall I couple Hell?
William Shakespeare
I could a tale unfold whose lightest wordWould harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,Thy knotted and combined locks to part,And each particular hair to stand on endLike quills upon the fretful porpentine.But this eternal blazon must not beTo ears of flesh and blood.List, list, O list!
William Shakespeare
Screw your courage to the sticking-place
William Shakespeare
In time we hate that which we often fear.
William Shakespeare
Knowing I lov'd my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.
William Shakespeare
And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it.
William Shakespeare
There is more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of by your philosophy.
William Shakespeare
There are more things in heaven and earth...than are dreamt of by your philosophy.
William Shakespeare
Glendower: I can call the spirits from the vasty deep.Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;But will they come, when you do call for them?
William Shakespeare
POLONIUS My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently.HAMLET Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?POLONIUS By th'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.HAMLET Then I will come to my mother by and by. - They fool me to the top of my bent. - I will come by and by.
William Shakespeare
Afore me! It is so very late,That we may call it early by and by.
William Shakespeare
she shall scant show well that now shows best.
William Shakespeare
Nay, 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping. All the kind of the Launces have this very fault. I have received my proportion, like the prodigious son, and am going with Sir Proteus to the Imperial's court. I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured dog that lives. My mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone, a very pebble stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog. A Jew would have wept to have seen our parting. Why, my grandam, having no eyes, look you, wept herself blind at my parting. Nay, I'll show you the manner of it. This shoe is my father. No, this left shoe is my father. No, no, this left shoe is my mother. Nay, that cannot be so neither. Yes, it is so, it is so -- it hath the worser sole. This shoe with the hole in it is my mother, and this my father. A vengeance on't! There 'tis. Now, sir, this staff is my sister, for, look you, she is as white as a lily and as small as a wand. This hat is Nan, our maid. I am the dog. No, the dog is himself, and I am the dog -- O, the dog is me, and I am myself. Ay, so, so. Now come I to my father: 'Father, your blessing.' Now should not the shoe speak a word for weeping. Now should I kiss my father -- well, he weeps on. Now come I to my mother. O, that she could speak now like a wood woman! Well, I kiss her -- why, there 'tis: here's my mother's breath up and down. Now come I to my sister; mark the moan she makes. Now the dog all this while sheds not a tear nor speaks a word!
William Shakespeare
Mother, you have my father much offended.
William Shakespeare