William Shakespeare

“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... ”

“Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it? ”

“If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction. ”

“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. ”

“The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king. ”

“When we are born, we cry, that we are come
To this great stage of fools.”

“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. ”

“An old man is twice a child. ”

“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. ”

“Nothing ’gainst Times scythe can make defence. ”

“The old folk, time’s doting chronicles. ”

“I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself, and falls on the other. ”

“I hold ambition of so light a quality that is is but a shadow’s shadow. ”

“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. ”

“The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. ”

“Come not within the measure of my wrath. ”

“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. ”

“I understand a fury in your words,
But not the words. ”

“My tongue will tell the anger of mine heart, Or else my heart, concealing it, will break. ”

“He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument. ”

“There is no fettering of authority. ”

“’Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud; but, God He knows, thy share thereof is small. ”

“A woman mov’d is like a fountain troubled, muddy,
ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty. ”

“Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold. ”

“How much more doth beauty beauteous seem by that sweet ornament which truth doth give! ”

“Look on beauty, and you shall see ’tis purchased by the weight. ”

“O, she is rich in beauty, only poor that, when she dies, with beauty dies her store. ”

“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? ”

“Et tu, Brute! ”

“His flight was madness: when our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors. ”

“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child! ”

“Men’s vows are women’s traitors! ”

“Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt. ”

“Knowing I lov’d my books, he furnish’d me
From mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom. ”

“My library
Was dukedom large enough. ”

“Though men can cover crimes with bold stern looks, poor women’s faces are their own faults’ books. ”

“Every man has business and desire,
Such as it is. ”

“O that a man might know the end of this day’s business ere it come! ”

“What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed?  a beast, no more. ”

“Fortune, that arrant whore, ne’er turns the key to the poor. ”

“O fortune, fortune!  All men call thee fickle. ”

“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. ”

“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. ”

“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. ”

“Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.”

“Yet I do fear thy nature; it is too full o’ the milk of human kindness. ”

“Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness. ”

“Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers come to dust. ”

“’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. ”

“But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail. ”

“In a false quarrel there is no true valour.”

“The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life. ”

“When valour preys on reason, it eats the sword it fights with. ”

“A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom and ever three parts coward. ”

“Conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought. ”

“Mercy but murders, pardoning those that kill. ”

“O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon ’t,
A brother’s murder. ”

“What’s done cannot be undone. ”

“A man can die but once. ”

“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. ”

“Blow, wind!  Come, wrack!  At least we’ll die with harness on our back. ”

“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. ”

“I would fain die a dry death. ”

“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! ”

“Is it sin to rush into the secret house of death, ere death dare come to us? ”

“O sleep, thou ape of death, lie dull upon her and be her sense but as a monument, thus in a chapel lying. ”

“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. ”

“Since Cleopatra died,
I have liv’d in such dishonour that the gods
Detest my baseness. ”

“The hind that would be mated by the lion must die for love. ”

“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. ”

“Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death the memory be green. ”

“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. ”

“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. ”

“What may this mean, that thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel revisit’st thus the glimpses of the moon? ”

“When beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. ”

“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. ”

“Can one desire too much of a good thing? ”

“[Drink] provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. ”

“Doubt that the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love. ”

“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. ”

“Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried. ”

“Do as adversaries do in law, strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends. ”

“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. ”

“The fool multitude, that choose by show, not learning more than the fond eye doth teach. ”

“I am sure care’s an enemy to life. ”

“O God, that man should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! ”

“To fear the foe, since fear oppresseth strength, gives in your weakness strength unto your foe. ”

“Here will be an old abusing of God’s patience and the king’s English. ”

“Ah, what a sign it is of evil life, where death’s approach is seen so terrible! ”

“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.”

“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks! ”

“Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. ”

“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. ”

“He must needs go that the devil drives. ”

“He will give the devil his due. ”

“Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word.”

“Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues we write in water. ”

“O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil! ”

“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. ”

“The devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape. ”

“There is a devilish mercy in the judge, if you’ll implore it, that will free your life, but fetter you till death. ”

“While you live tell truth and shame the devil. ”

“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. ”

“A man in all the world’s new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain. ”

“The fashion wears out more apparel than the man. ”

“The glass of fashion and the mould of form”

“What a deformed thief this fashion is. ”

“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. ”

“It is a wise father that knows his own child. ”

“Thy wish was father...  to that thought. ”

“Thou hast nor youth nor age, but, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep, dreaming on both. ”

“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. ”

“Our bodies are our gardens to which our wills are gardeners.”

“A high hope for a low heaven: God grant us patience! ”

“Gardener, for telling me these news of woe, pray God the plants thou graft’st may never grow. ”

“I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another. ”

“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 cannon ’gainst self-slaughter!  O God!  God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world! ”

“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. ”

“The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us. ”

“True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings;
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings. ”

“Be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them. ”

“’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. ”

“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? ”

“Good night, good night!  parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow. ”

“Short time seems long in sorrow’s sharp sustaining. ”

“Sleep, that sometimes shuts up sorrow’s eye, steal me awhile from mine own company. ”

“Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp’d, doth burn the heart to cinders where it is. ”

“What’s gone and what’s past help
Should be past grief. ”

“How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes! ”

“Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much. ”

“Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing. ”

“I hate ingratitude more in a man
than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,
or any taint of vice whose strong corruption
inhabits our frail blood.”

“If they love they know not why, they hate upon no better ground, they hate upon no better a ground. ”

“In time we hate that which we often fear.”

“He hath eaten me out of house and home. ”

“Every man has his fault, and honesty is his. ”

“No legacy is so rich as honesty.”

“Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till by broad spreading it disperses to naught.”

“Mine honour is my life; both grow in one; take honour from me and my life is done.”

“Oft expectations fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits
Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits. ”

“A jest’s prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it. ”

“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. ”

“O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible,
As a nose on a man’s face, or a weathercock on a steeple. ”

“Oh, I have lost my reputation!  I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. ”

“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy!
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. ”

“So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt. ”

“Trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ. ”

“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. ”

“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.”

“He’s loved of the distracted multitude, who like not in their judgement, but their eyes. ”

“My salad days, when I was green in judgement, cold in blood. ”

“My salad days,
When I was green in judgment. ”

“Young in limbs, in judgement old. ”