Top 100 Shakespeare Like Quotes
#1. I always consider Shakespeare like a huge room. I mean, you open the door, and you can go anywhere.
Campbell Scott
#2. His neigh is like the bidding of a monarch, and his countenance enforces homage. He is indeed a horse ...
William Shakespeare
#3. I never wanted to become an actress because I'd read great literature or seen great Shakespeare. It was more just wanting to understand what the people were really like, why they said all the strange things they did.
Julie Walters
#4. For death remembered should be like a mirror,
Who tells us life's but breath, to trust it error.
William Shakespeare
#6. The edge of war, like an ill-sheathed knife, No more shall cut his master.
William Shakespeare
#7. He didn't know what the feeling was, but it was like a Phoenix rising from the ashes of his almost-dead soul. How dramatic. Take that, Shakespeare.
Carly Fall
#8. I was like, what the hell is my life coming to? I'm a trained actor! I've done Shakespeare and here I am having farting contests with an imaginary dog!
Matthew Lillard
#9. And pity, like a new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.
William Shakespeare
#10. All furnished, all in arms;
All plum'd like estridges that with the wind
Bated like eagles having lately bathed;
Glittering in golden coats like images;
As full of spirit as the month of May
And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;
Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.
William Shakespeare
#12. These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triump die, like fire and powder
Which, as they kiss, consume
William Shakespeare
#13. Love comforeth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun.
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain;
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done.
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.
William Shakespeare
#14. The English public doesn't really like Shakespeare; it prefers football.
Hesketh Pearson
#15. He made me feel unhinged ... like he could take me apart and put me back together again and again.
Chelsie Shakespeare
#16. Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.
William Shakespeare
#19. I really like Shakespeare a lot. The characters that he writes for females, I think, are really great and a lot more compelling than what modern writers write, which is weird because they didn't have actresses then.
Julia Stiles
#20. Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love: now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant's robe
Upon a dwarfish thief
William Shakespeare
#21. O,speak to me no more;these words like daggers enter my ears.(a fancy way of saying SHUT UP!)"
- William Shakespeare "hamlet
William Shakespeare
#22. A woman that is like a German clock, Still a-repairing, ever out of frame, And never going aright, being a watch, But being watched that it may still go right!
William Shakespeare
#23. Shakespeare's plays often turn on the idea of fate, as much drama does. What makes them so tragic is the gap between what his characters might like to accomplish and what fate provides them.
Nate Silver
#24. Dylan is so brilliant. To me, he makes William Shakespeare look like Billy Joel.
George Harrison
#25. What have we here? a man or a fish? dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient and fishlike smell; a kind of not of the newest poor-John. A strange fish!
William Shakespeare
#26. Shakespeare doesn't belong to the past. If his material is valid, it is valid now. It's like coal. The only meaningfulness of a piece of coal starts and finishes with its combustion, giving us light and heat. And that to me is Shakespeare.
Peter Brook
#28. The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment ... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.
Alfred North Whitehead
#30. We are accustomed in England to chalk in rolling downs, except where bitten into by the sea, but elsewhere it is riven and presents cliffs, and these cliffs are not at all like that of Shakespeare at Dover but overhang, where hard beds alternate with others that are friable.
Sabine Baring-Gould
#31. My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd; And I myself see not the bottom of it.
William Shakespeare
#32. I'd like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God's a workman. I don't think there's anything better than a workman.
Laurence Olivier
#33. The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: "Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like myself are many and no one.
Jorge Luis Borges
#34. Shakespeare gives you these clues - these little pieces of gold dust, I call them. They tell you so much about the story, the character, the drive, the intentions. It's like a gift.
Christian Camargo
#35. Fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings, the husband's the bigger.
William Shakespeare
#36. 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 pride At length broke under me, and now has left me, Weary and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream that must for ever hide me.
William Shakespeare
#37. I don't want to be like Shakespeare; I want to be like Saurabh Sharma, and I don't want other people to become my xerox copies. Be Thyself!
Saurabh Sharma
#38. Wolves and bears, they say, casting their savagery aside, have done like offices of pity.
William Shakespeare
#39. From too much liberty, my Lucio, liberty
As surfeit is the father of much fast,
So every scope of the immoderate use
Turns 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
#40. We cannot all write like Lincoln or Shakespeare, but even the least gifted of us has the incredible instrument, our voice, to communicate the range of human emotions. Why would we deprive ourselves of that?
Sherry Turkle
#41. Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
William Shakespeare
#42. I have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of discretion, and I will right myself like a soldier.
William Shakespeare
#44. Come, swear it, damn thyself, lest, being like one of heaven, the devils themselves should fear to seize thee; therefore be double-damned, swear,
thou art honest.
William Shakespeare
#45. What say you? Hence,
Horrible villain! or I'll spurn thine eyes
Like balls before me; I'll unhair thy head:
Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire, and stew'd in brine,
Smarting in lingering pickle.
William Shakespeare
#46. And now about the cauldron sing
Like elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in.
William Shakespeare
#47. You have but mistook me all the while ... I live by bread like you, taste grief, feel want, need friends. Conditioned thus how can you call me king?
William Shakespeare
#48. Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast, Ready with every nod to tumble down Into the fatal bowels of the deep.
William Shakespeare
#49. Supposition all our lives shall be stuck full of eyes; For treason is but trusted like the fox, Who, ne'er so tame, so cherished and locked up, Will have a wild trick of his ancestors.
William Shakespeare
#50. The devil can site scripture for his own purpose! An evil soul producing holy witness is like a villain with a smiling cheek.
William Shakespeare
#51. I've always been a sci-fi/fantasy guy. My book reports in school, whenever you didn't have to do it on Shakespeare, I did it on, like, Piers Anthony and Raymond Feist.
Jonathan Hickman
#52. 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.
William Shakespeare
#53. How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, like softest music to attending ears.
William Shakespeare
#54. I want to play Eva Peron. I've already done a lot of Shakespeare, but I'd like to do Lady Macbeth.
Tamara Tunie
#55. There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring [making music] to the young-eyed cherubins;
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it.
William Shakespeare
#56. Life is an admirable arrangement, isn't it, little mother. It is so clever of it to have June in every year and a morning in every day, let alone things like birds, and Shakespeare, and one's work.
Elizabeth Von Arnim
#57. You came to talk about the play," he said. "Let me discourage you. It was written to entertain people. Like horror movies. It isn't literature, it doesn't mean anything. Wharfinger was no Shakespeare." "Who was he?" she said. "Who was Shakespeare? It was a long time ago.
Thomas Pynchon
#58. To say that life is nothing but a property of certain peculiar combinations of atoms is like saying that Shakespeare's Hamlet is nothing but a property of a peculiar combination of letters.
Ernst F. Schumacher
#59. I don't think it's that I don't like Sondheim. It's that I find it really ... I don't know how to describe it. Doing it is the most extraordinary thing. Because it's like Shakespeare times 100 with singing. It's that satisfying - and that demanding.
Imelda Staunton
#61. Apparently the complete works of Shakespeare packed quite a wallop. To think, my mother said I'd never find use for an English degree. Ha! I'd like to see her knock someone silly with an apron and a cookie press.
Rachel Vincent
#62. Rome's just a city like anywhere else. A vastly overrated city, I'd say. It trades on belief just as Stratford trades on Shakespeare.
Anthony Burgess
#63. Good strong hair,' he was fond of saying, 'means there's a good strong brain underneath.' 'Like Shakespeare,' Matilda had once said to him. 'Like who?' 'Shakespeare, Daddy.' 'Was he brainy?' 'Very, Daddy.' 'He had masses of hair, did he?' 'He was bald, Daddy.
Roald Dahl
#64. I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.
Charles Bukowski
#65. You can't go by what a girl says, when she's giving you the devil for making a chump of yourself. It's like Shakespeare. Sounds well, but doesn't mean anything.
P.G. Wodehouse
#66. Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valour
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would,'
Like the poor cat i' the adage?
William Shakespeare
#67. Of the authors writing in English, I'd mention Shakespeare and Milton. But all this is terribly high-hat and makes me sound very po-faced, I'm afraid; however, I just happen to like these enormous, swinging, great creatures.
William Golding
#68. 'As You Like It' was the first Shakespeare production I ever did.
Zoe Wanamaker
#69. But love that comes too late,
Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried,
To the great sender turns a sour offense,
Crying, 'That's good that's gone.
William Shakespeare
#70. Glory is like a circle in the water, which never ceaseth to enlarge itself, till by broad spreading, it disperses to naught.
William Shakespeare
#71. The benediction of these covering heavens Fall on their heads like dew, for they are worthy To inlay heaven with stars.
William Shakespeare
#72. Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma or a hideous dream.
William Shakespeare
#73. I think Aaron Sorkin is like Shakespeare. When you go through it, there is a rhythm and clues all over the place of how it should be played.
Chris Messina
#74. Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whilst, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads
And recks not his own read.
William Shakespeare
#75. If thou art rich, thou art poor; for, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, and death unloads thee.
William Shakespeare
#76. He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.
William Shakespeare
#78. I give you real world-changers like Homer, Jack Kirby, and the aforementioned Shakespeare as the archangels of pure story.
Bill Willingham
#79. Shakespeare is absolutely big in Africa. I guess he's big everywhere. Growing up, Shakespeare was the thing. You'd learn monologues and you'd recite them. And just like hip-hop, it made you feel like you knew how to speak English really well. You had a mastery of the English language to some extent.
Ishmael Beah
#80. When I was in junior high, I would carry around this huge volume of Shakespeare. I just like the romantic vibe. I write about it because I fall in and out of love quite a bit. I was always pulling on my mother's heartstrings to get more love.
Fefe Dobson
#81. Who sees his true-love in her naked bed,
Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white,
But when his glutton eye so full hath fed,
His other agents aim at like delight?
Who is so faint that dare not be so bold
To touch the fire, the weather being cold?
William Shakespeare
#82. Poets like Shakespeare know more about poetry than any $25 an hour man.
Robert Frost
#83. So we grew together like to a double cherry, seeming parted, but yet an union in partition, two lovely berries molded on one stem.
William Shakespeare
#84. 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.
William Shakespeare
#85. For the same reason people watch action movies or game shows, I guess. Mindless entertainment. Not everything has to be Shakespeare, you know. Or Oscar Wilde. It's fun. Like... gilded porn.
Summer Olsen
#86. All of Creation's a farce.
Man was born as a joke.
In his head his reason is buffeted
Like wind-blown smoke.
Life is a game.
Everyone ridicules everyone else.
But he who has the last laugh
Laughs longest.
William Shakespeare
#87. And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life.
James Earl Jones
#88. O my good lord, that comfort comes too late,
'Tis like a pardon after execution.
That gentle physic, given in time, had cured me;
But now I am past all comforts here but prayers.
William Shakespeare
#90. Like one who draws the model of a house beyond his power to build it who, half through, gives o'er, and leaves his part-created cost a naked subject to the weeping clouds.
William Shakespeare
#91. Vice repeated is like the wandering wind, blows dust in others' eyes to spread itself.
William Shakespeare
#92. That, like an eagle in a dovecote, I
Fluttered your Volscians in Corioles.
William Shakespeare
#94. It's a perfectly valid position to not like Shakespeare.
Ted Rall
#95. Not like Homer would I write,
Not like Dante if I might,
Not like Shakespeare at his best,
Not like Goethe or the rest,
Like myself, however small,
Like myself, or not at all.
William Allingham
#96. Either our history shall with full mouth
Speak freely of our acts, or else our grave,
Like Turkish mute, shall have a tongueless mouth,
Not worshipped with a waxen epitaph.
William Shakespeare
#97. I go, Andronicus: and for thy hand
Look by and by to have thy sons with thee.
[Aside]
Their heads, I mean. O, how this villany
Doth fat me with the very thoughts of it!
Let fools do good, and fair men call for grace. 1340
Aaron will have his soul black like his face.
William Shakespeare
#98. O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! And yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping.
William Shakespeare
#99. In this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the great Art of Telling the Truth, even though it be covertly, and by snatches.
Herman Melville
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