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

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

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

George Orwell

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

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

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

Phar West Nagle

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

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

Emilie Autumn

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

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

...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

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

Benjamin Haydon

Work is the undoing of nature.

Paul Majkut

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

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

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

William Shakespeare

At this hourLie at my mercy all mine enemies.

William Shakespeare

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

Rod Longuestte

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

Roger Zelazny

Ambition should be made from sterner stuff.

William Shakespeare

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

William Shakespeare

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

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

Bert McCoy

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

Jennifer Donnelly

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

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

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

Tiffany Ferentini

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

Sweet are the uses of adversityWhich, like the toad, ugly and venomous,Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

William Shakespeare

To be now a sensible man, by and by a fool, and presently abeast!

William Shakespeare

From too much liberty, my Lucio, libertyAs surfeit is the father of much fast,So every scope of the immoderate useTurns to restraint. Our natures do pursue, -Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, - A thirsty evil; and when we drink we die.

William Shakespeare

Frequent suggestions were made during the course of the trial that the motives of the donor and the donees alike, in carrying out this transaction, were to escape death duties. I feel constrained to dispose once and for all of these suggestions by the short answer that the existence or otherwise of such motives is irrelevant, excep as evidence for or against the bona fides of the transactions. There is the highest authority for the proposition that, if a man can lawfully so order his affairs that the payment of revenue duties of any kind is reduced or avoided altogether, there is no legal objection to his doing so. Whatever may be thought as the the morality of such transactions in these times from the point of view of patriotism and public spirit, there is no ground for ignoring their legal effect, unless such transactions be proved to be amere sham, such as those falling within the words 'not bona fide' in the act of 1894, or the phrase 'artificial transaction' in the Finance Acts of more recent years.Attorney General vs. Goneril Albany in re the estate of King Lear, MORE LEGAL FICTIONS

A. Laurence Polak

What, all so soon asleep! I wish mine eyesWould, with themselves, shut up my thoughts...

William Shakespeare

Orr slept. He dreamed. There was no rub.

Ursula K Le Guin

Be bloody, bold, and resolute. Laugh to scornThe power of man, for none of woman bornShall harm Macbeth.

William Shakespeare

The time approachesThat will with due decision make us knowWhat we shall say we have and what we owe.Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,But certain issue strokes must arbitrate;Towards which, advance th

William Shakespeare

Since Shakespeare had a feel for revolutionary rhetoric, let’s all cry: “Peace, freedom and liberty!

Carl William Brown

Teagan: How long has it been since you read a book that didn’t havevampires in it?Abby: They write books with no vampires? Wait...the penguins made us read that Shakesrear guy, right?Teagan: Shakespeare.

Kersten Hamilton

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

Oscar Wilde

But what if you are a smart girl in love? All because I was a book nerd didn’t mean, I didn’t feel, I didn’t want. Shylock had cried out in excess of pain, “If you prick me do I not bleed!” But a book nerd is not allowed to be human, to say “you make me melt” and still have her mind want something else entirely?

Candice Raquel Lee

She moves me not, or not removes at least affection's edge in me.

William Shakespeare

Here's one of the problems with communicating in the words of a man who is not around to explain himself: it's damn hard sometimes to tell what he was talking about. Look, the sheer fact that people have banged out book after article after dramatic interpretation of this guy should tell you that despite his eloquence, he wasn't the clearest of communicators.

Eleanor Brown

such wanton, wild, and usual slips/ As are companions noted and most known/ To youth and liberty.

William Shakespeare

Tacitus laughed at the Germanic tribes who tried to stop a torrent with their shields, but it is no less naive to believe in planetary migration or to believe in the establishment by purely human means of a society fully satisfied and perfectly inoffensive and continuing to progress indefinitely. All this proves that man ,though he has inevitably become less naive in some things, has nonetheless learned nothing as far as essentials are concerned; the only thing that man is capable of when left to himself is to "commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways," as Shakespeare would say. And the world being what it is, one is doubtless not guilty of a truism in adding that it is better to go to Heaven naively than to go intelligently to hell.

Frithjof Schuon

CARDINAL WOLSEYSo farewell to the little good you bear me.Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness!This is the state of man: to-day he puts forthThe tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms,And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surelyHis greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,This many summers in a sea of glory,But far beyond my depth: my high-blown prideAt length broke under me and now has left me,Weary and old with service, to the mercyOf a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye:I feel my heart new open'd. O, how wretchedIs that poor man that hangs on princes' favours!There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,More pangs and fears than wars or women have:And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,Never to hope again

William Shakespeare

Who knows himself a braggart, let him fear this, for it will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass.

William Shakespeare

Ribs closing on his heart, Will battled internal sirens whose song he couldn’t yet decipher. During his childhood, ‘sin’ had been such an abstract word. It denoted getting your Sunday best dirty and torn, or lying to have your brother punished for things you’d done yourself. But now, on the cusp of adulthood, the word seemed to grow and change, to acquire terrifying shades of darkness. He was beginning to understand that there was more to it. That there were things the human body longed for that were infinitely worse than playing in mud and telling fibs.

Ingela Bohm

One reason current discussions of justice are so impoverished is that our heterogeneous society does not have many shared texts. Shakespeare's plays are among the few secular texts that remain common enough and complex enough to sustain these conversation. His answers to our dilemmas may not "bear on all points." Yet they teach us not to underestimate the action of the flower.

Kenji Yoshino

For this new-married man approaching here,Whose salt imagination yet hath wrong'dYour well defended honour, you must pardonFor Mariana's sake: but as he adjudged your brother,--Being criminal, in double violationOf sacred chastity and of promise-breachThereon dependent, for your brother's life,--The very mercy of the law cries outMost audible, even from his proper tongue,'An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!'Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure;Like doth quit like, and MEASURE still FOR MEASURE

William Shakespeare

The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law. - Romeo

William Shakespeare

I cannot live to hear the news from England.But I do prophesy th' election lightsOn Fortinbras; he has my dying voice.So tell him, with th' occurents, more and less,Which have solicited - the rest is silence.

William Shakespeare

They died together; they'll always be remembered together. It's decided, once and for all. He was hers. The rumors don't matter; they'll fade...People may remember it was suicide, but my name won't be attached. It will just be two lovers, fused together forever.

Rebecca Serle

Themes of descent often turn on the struggle between the titanic and the demonic within the same person or group. In Moby Dick, Ahab’s quest for the whale may be mad and “monomaniacal,” as it is frequently called, or even evil so far as he sacrifices his crew and ship to it, but evil or revenge are not the point of the quest. The whale itself may be only a “dumb brute,” as the mate says, and even if it were malignantly determined to kill Ahab, such an attitude, in a whale hunted to the death, would certainly be understandable if it were there. What obsesses Ahab is in a dimension of reality much further down than any whale, in an amoral and alienating world that nothing normal in the human psyche can directly confront.The professed quest is to kill Moby Dick, but as the portents of disaster pile up it becomes clear that a will to identify with (not adjust to) what Conrad calls the destructive element is what is really driving Ahab. Ahab has, Melville says, become a “Prometheus” with a vulture feeding on him. The axis image appears in the maelstrom or descending spiral (“vortex”) of the last few pages, and perhaps in a remark by one of Ahab’s crew: “The skewer seems loosening out of the middle of the world.” But the descent is not purely demonic, or simply destructive: like other creative descents, it is partly a quest for wisdom, however fatal the attaining of such wisdom may be. A relation reminiscent of Lear and the fool develops at the end between Ahab and the little black cabin boy Pip, who has been left so long to swim in the sea that he has gone insane. Of him it is said that he has been “carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro . . . and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps.”Moby Dick is as profound a treatment as modern literature affords of the leviathan symbolism of the Bible, the titanic-demonic force that raises Egypt and Babylon to greatness and then hurls them into nothingness; that is both an enemy of God outside the creation, and, as notably in Job, a creature within it of whom God is rather proud. The leviathan is revealed to Job as the ultimate mystery of God’s ways, the “king over all the children of pride” (41:34), of whom Satan himself is merely an instrument. What this power looks like depends on how it is approached. Approached by Conrad’s Kurtz through his Antichrist psychosis, it is an unimaginable horror: but it may also be a source of energy that man can put to his own use. There are naturally considerable risks in trying to do so: risks that Rimbaud spoke of in his celebrated lettre du voyant as a “dérèglement de tous les sens.” The phrase indicates the close connection between the titanic and the demonic that Verlaine expressed in his phrase poète maudit, the attitude of poets who feel, like Ahab, that the right worship of the powers they invoke is defiance.

Northrop Frye

England has two books, the Bible and Shakespeare. England made Shakespeare,but the Bible made England.

Victor Hugo

O! Learn to read what silent love hath writ:to hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

William Shakespeare

To be honest, as this world goes is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.Hamlet Act II, Scene II Lines 178-179

William Shakespeare

I believe...that to be very poor and very beautiful is most probably a moral failure more than an artistic success. Shakespeare would have done well in any generation because he would have refused to die in a corner; he would have taken the false gods and made them over; he would have taken the current formulae and forced them into something lesser men thought them incapable of. Alive today he would undoubtedly have written and directed motion pictures, plays, and God knows what. Instead of saying, "This medium is not good," he would have used it and made it good. If some people called some his work cheap (which some of it was), he wouldn't have cared a rap, because he would know that without some vulgarity there is no complete man. He would have hated refinement, as such, because it is always a withdrawal, and he was too tough to shrink from anything.

Raymond Chandler

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Shakespeare Quotes - Page 6

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