Quotes by Playwrights - Page 54

If I could write the beauty of your eyesAnd in fresh numbers number all your graces,The age to come would say 'this poet lies! Such heaven never touched earthly faces
William Shakespeare
Must I observe you? Must I stand & crouchUnder your testy humour? By the gods, You shall digest the venom ofyour spleen,Though it do split you, for, from thisday forth, I'll use you for my mirth, yea,for my laughter, when you are waspish.
William Shakespeare
No, take more! What may be sworn by, both divine and human, Seal what I end withal! This double worship, Where [one] part does disdain with cause, the other Insult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdom, Cannot conclude but by the yea and no Of general ignorance— it must omit Real necessities, and give way the while To unstable slightness. Purpose so barr’d, it follows Nothing is done to purpose. Therefore beseech you— You that will be less fearful than discreet; That love the fundamental part of state More than you doubt the change on’t; that prefer A noble life before a long, and wish To jump a body with a dangerous physic That’s sure of death without it— at once pluck out The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick The sweet which is their poison. Your dishonor Mangles true judgment, and bereaves the state Of that integrity which should become’t; Not having the power to do the good it would, For th’ ill which doth control’t.
William Shakespeare
Turn hell-hound, turn.
William Shakespeare
How true a twain Seemeth this concordant one! Love hath reason, Reason none, If what parts, can so remain.
William Shakespeare
Timon: I’ll beat thee, but I should infect my hands.
William Shakespeare
Timon: Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon!
William Shakespeare
-Gardener: ...Go thou, and like an executioner,Cut off the heads of too fast growing sprays,That look too lofty in our commonwealth:All must be even in our government.You thus employ'd, I will go root awayThe noisome weeds, which without profit suckThe soil's fertility from wholesome flowers.+Servant:Why should we in the compass of a paleKeep law and form and due proportion,Showing, as in a model, our firm estate,When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up,Her fruit-trees all upturned, her hedges ruin'd,Her knots disorder'd and her wholesome herbsSwarming with caterpillars?-Gardener:Hold thy peace! He that hath suffer'd this disorder'd springHath now himself met with the fall of leaf.,,
William Shakespeare
Life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing
William Shakespeare
Pleasure and revenge have ears more deaf than adders to the voice of any true decision.
William Shakespeare
What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by.Richard loves Richard; that is, I and I.
William Shakespeare
[Act 5, Scene 4, ROSALIND] If I were a woman I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me and breaths that I defied not: and, I am sure, as many as have good beards or good faces or sweet breaths will, for my kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me farewell.
William Shakespeare
Hamlet' dwarfs 'Hamilton' - it dwarfs pretty much everything - but there's a revealing similarity between them. Shakespeare's longest play leaves its audience in the dark about some basic and seemingly crucial facts. It's not as if the Bard forgot, in the course of all those words, to tell us whether Hamlet was crazy or only pretending: He wanted us to wonder. He forces us to work on a puzzle that has no definite answer. And this mysteriousness is one reason why we find the play irresistible. 'Hamilton' is riddled with question marks. The first act begins with a question, and so does the second. The entire relationship between Hamilton and Burr is based on a mutual and explicit lack of comprehension: 'I will never understand you,' says Hamilton, and Burr wonders, 'What it is like in his shoes?' Again and again, Lin distinguishes characters by what they wish they knew. 'What'd I miss?' asks Jefferson in the song that introduces him. 'Would that be enough?' asks Eliza in the song that defines her. 'Why do you write like you're running out of time?' asks everybody in a song that marvels at Hamilton's drive, and all but declares that there's no way to explain it. 'Hamilton', like 'Hamlet', gives an audience the chance to watch a bunch of conspicuously intelligent and well-spoken characters fill the stage with 'words, words, words,' only to discover, again and again, the limits to what they can comprehend.
Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter
She is drowned already, sir, with salt water, though I seem to drown her remembrance again with more.
William Shakespeare
About anyone so great as Shakespeare, it is probable that we can never be right; and if we can never be right, it is better that we should from time to time change our way of being wrong.
T.S Eliot
Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow as seek to quench the fire of love with words.
William Shakespeare
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause
William Shakespeare
. . . when a woman has a husbandAnd you've got none,Why should she take advice from you?Even if you can quote Balzac and ShakespeareAnd all them other highfalutin' Greeks.
Meredith Willson
Oh, William, what pitiable creatures we men are! When we go to church we make the devil angry, when we enjoy ourselves in the inns, we make God angry; we are the unlucky lot stuck between two fires!
Mehmet Murat ildan
To die, is to be banish'd from myself; And Silvia is myself: banish'd from her, Is self from self: a deadly banishment! What light is light, if Silvia be not seen? What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by? Unless it be to think that she is by, And feed upon the shadow of perfection.Except I be by Silvia in the night, There is no music in the nightingale; Unless I look on Silvia in the day, There is no day for me to look upon; She is my essence, and I leave to be, If I be not by her fair influence Foster'd, illumin'd, cherish'd, kept alive.
William Shakespeare
They are the books, the arts, the academes,That show, contain and nourish all the world.
William Shakespeare
Thou whoreson zed! Thou unnecessary letter! My lord, if you will give me leave, I will tread this unbolted villain into mortar, and daub the wall of a jakes with him. *all cheer for Shakespearean insults*
William Shakespeare
But men may construe things after their fashion, Clean from the purpose of the things themselves.
William Shakespeare
Why can’t you remember your Shakespeare and forget the third-raters. You’ll find what you’re trying to say in him- as you’ll find everything else worth saying. 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with sleep.''- 'Fine! That’s beautiful. But I wasn’t trying to say that. We are such stuff as manure is made on, so let’s drink up and forget it. That’s more my idea.
Eugene O'Neill
My Crown is in my heart, not on my head:Not deck'd with Diamonds, and Indian stones:Nor to be seen: my Crown is call'd Content,A Crown it is, that seldom Kings enjoy.
William Shakespeare
But Kate, dost thou understand thus much English? Canst thou love me?"Catherine: "I cannot tell."Henry: "Can any of your neighbours tell, Kate? I'll ask them.
William Shakespeare
If one good deed in all my life I did, I do repent it from my very soul.
William Shakespeare
O, that he were here to write me down an ass! But, masters, remember, that I am an ass; though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.
William Shakespeare
-No, I am thy father.
Ian Doescher
I can call spirits from the vasty deep."Why so can I, or so can any man. But will they come when you do call for them?
William Shakespeare
You are thought here to the most senseless and fit man for the job.
William Shakespeare
They lie deadly that tell you have good faces.
William Shakespeare
Yet but three come one more.Two of both kinds make up four.Ere she comes curst and sad.Cupid is a knavish lad.Thus to make poor females mad.
William Shakespeare
O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! And yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping.
William Shakespeare
- Be thou not technical with me,/Or else thine input valve may swift receive/a hearty helping of my golden foot.
Ian Doescher
By my soul I swear, there is no power in the tongue of man to alter me.
William Shakespeare
Antonio: Will you stay no longer? nor will you not that I go with you?t Sebastian: By your patience, no. My stars shine darkly over me; the malignancy of my fate might, perhaps, distemper yours; therefore I shall crave of you your leave that I may bear my evils alone. It were a bad recompense for your love to lay any of them on you.
William Shakespeare
He kills her in her own humor.
William Shakespeare
Alack, there lies more peril in thine eyeThan twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet,And I am proof against their enmity.
William Shakespeare
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.
William Shakespeare
And nothing is, but what is not.
William Shakespeare
The Play's the Thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.
William Shakespeare
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/ But in ourselves.
William Shakespeare
Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.
William Shakespeare
And therefore, — since I cannot prove a lover,To entertain these fair well-spoken days, —I am determined to prove a villain,And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
William Shakespeare
Excellent wretch! Perdition catch my soul But I do love thee! and when I love thee not, Chaos is come again.
William Shakespeare
Your face, my thane, is as a book where menMay read strange matters. To beguile the time,Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,But be the serpent under't.
William Shakespeare
The sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness. And in the taste destroys the appetite. Therefore, love moderately.
William Shakespeare
Conscience doth make cowards of us all.
William Shakespeare
Some are born great, others achieve greatness.
William Shakespeare
Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.
William Shakespeare
All's well that ends well.
William Shakespeare
Are you sure/That we are awake? It seems to me/That yet we sleep, we dream
William Shakespeare
This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. 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 beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
William Shakespeare
All causes shall give way: I am in bloodStepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,Returning were as tedious as go o’er.
William Shakespeare
You speak an infinite deal of nothing.
William Shakespeare
These violent delights have violent endsAnd in their triump die, like fire and powderWhich, as they kiss, consume
William Shakespeare
I wanted so terribly to be good to him.
Dodie Smith
...and when he dies, cut him out in little stars, and the face of heaven will be so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no heed to the garish sun.
William Shakespeare
I've lived to see my longings dieI've lived to see my longings die:My dreams and I have grown apart;Now only sorrow haunts my eye,The wages of a bitter heart.Beneath the storms of hostile fate,My flowery wreath has faded fast;I live alone and sadly waitTo see when death will come at last.Just so, when the winds in winter moanAnd snow descends in frigid flakes,Upon a naked branch, alone,The final leaf of summer shakes!...
Alexander Pushkin