Top 100 To Shakespeare Quotes
#1. Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose to the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude, and in the calmest and most stillest night, with all appliances and means to boot, deny it to a king?
William Shakespeare
#3. If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say, 'This poet lies; Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
William Shakespeare
#4. Riotous madness,
To be entangled with those mouth-made vows,
Which break themselves in swearing!
William Shakespeare
#5. The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven; and as imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown, the poet's pen turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name; such tricks hath strong imagination.
William Shakespeare
#7. You know what talent is? The curse of expectation. As a kid you have to deal with that, beat it somehow. If you can write, you think God put you on earth to blow Shakespeare away. Or if you can paint, maybe you think
I did
that God put you on earth to blow your father away.
Stephen King
#8. The media love coarse debate because coarse debate drives ratings and ratings generate profits. Unless the TV producer happens to be William Shakespeare, an argument is more interesting than a soliloquy - and there will never be a shortage of people willing to argue on TV.
John Sununu
#9. Boy, this shall not excuse the injuries that
Thou hast done to me.
Therefore turn and draw.
William Shakespeare
#10. 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
#11. This was Shakespeare's form; who walked in every path of human life, felt every passion; and to all mankind doth now, will ever, that experience yield which his own genius only could acquire.
Mark Akenside
#12. 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
#13. For death remembered should be like a mirror,
Who tells us life's but breath, to trust it error.
William Shakespeare
#14. May never glorious sun reflex his beams Upon the country where you make abode: But darkness and the gloomy shade of death Environ you, till mischief and despair Drive you to break your necks or hang yourselves!
William Shakespeare
#15. To persevere
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness: 'tis unmanly grief.
William Shakespeare
#16. We are not ourselves When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind To suffer with the body.
William Shakespeare
#17. If it be now, 'tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come - the readiness is all.
William Shakespeare
#18. So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly.
William Shakespeare
#19. I'm not so naive as to think that everybody always succeeds, right? I mean, half of Shakespeare's stories are tragedies - right?
Michael J. Saylor
#21. I can't think of anything worse than calling Shakespeare 'highbrow,' because on the one hand, it's brilliant writing. But his plays were popular. People went to see them.
Timothy Dalton
#22. Homer and Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing.
Henry David Thoreau
#23. The English people, a lot of them, would not be able to understand a word of spoken Shakespeare. There are people who do and I'm not denying they exist. But it's a far more philistine country than people think.
Colin Firth
#24. O serpent heart hid with a flowering face!
Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant, feind angelical, dove feather raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of devinest show, just opposite to what thou justly seemest - A dammed saint, an honourable villain!
William Shakespeare
#25. If your friend wishes to read your 'Plutarch's Lives,' 'Shakespeare,' or 'The Federalist Papers,' tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat - but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart.
Mortimer J. Adler
#26. Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way:
William Shakespeare
#27. Surely, we are provided with senses as well fitted to penetrate the spaces of the real, the substantial, the eternal, as these outward are to penetrate the material universe. Veias, Menu, Zoroaster, Socrates, Christ, Shakespeare, Swedenborg,
these are some of our astronomers.
Henry David Thoreau
#28. GRATIANO
I have a wife I love. I wish she were in heaven so she could appeal to some power to make this dog Jew change his mind.
NERISSA
It's nice you're offering to sacrifice her behind her back. That wish of yours could start quite an argument back at home.
William Shakespeare
#29. The eagle suffers little birds to sing, And is not careful what they mean thereby, Knowing that with the shadow of his wings He can at pleasure stint their melody: Even so mayest thou the giddy men of Rome.
William Shakespeare
#30. Did he so often lodge in open field, In winter's cold and summer's parching heat, To conquer France, his true inheritance?
William Shakespeare
#31. Shakespeare has great ability to skirt around a subject and portray human nature.
Kelli O'Hara
#32. It comes to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him.
William Shakespeare
#33. It must be remembered that the Iliad and Odyssey were composed as epic tales and not as historical texts. To use Shakespeare's Macbeth as a source for 11th-century Scottish politics would rather miss the point of the play, and the same is true of the Homeric epics.
Nic Fields
#34. We don't go to Shakespeare to find out about life in Elizabethan England; we go to Shakespeare to find out about ourselves now.
Jeanette Winterson
#35. Music can minister to minds diseased, pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain, and with its sweet oblivious antidote, cleanse the full bosom of all perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart.
William Shakespeare
#36. When holy and devout religious men are at their beads, 'tis hard to draw them thence; so sweet is zealous contemplation.
William Shakespeare
#37. Whenever I've been asked to be in a film, directors only want me to play myself ... I'm fascinated by the thought of being an actor, but it's too hard. And I think Shakespeare-which has been suggested to me-might be a bit of a stretch.
Tom Jones
#39. As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.
William Shakespeare
#40. 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
#42. Shakespeare used the word 'flush' to indicate plenty of money. Well, just remember there was only one Shakespeare, and he was the only one that had a right to use that word in that sense . You'll never be a Shakespeare, there will never be such another - Nature exhausted herself in producing him.
Joseph Devlin
#43. Mechanic slaves
With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall
Uplift us to the view.
William Shakespeare
#44. The surest way to arouse and hold the attention of the reader is by being specific, definitive, and concrete. The greatest writers - Homer, Dante, Shakespeare - are effective largely because they deal in particulars and report the details that matter. Their words call up pictures.
William Strunk Jr.
#45. The glowworm shows the matin to be near And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.
William Shakespeare
#46. To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
William Shakespeare
#47. She captured the spot of my world's centre and sent me in elliptic rings about it, causing the ground beneath me to vanish and the breath of my lungs to disperse. I was a rock locked in helpless orbit.
Richard Ronald Allan
#48. World, world, O world! But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee/ Life would not yield to age.
William Shakespeare
#50. If it be love indeed, tell me how much.
There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.
I'll set a bourn how far to be belov'd.
Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.
Antony and Cleopatra - Act 1, Scene 1
William Shakespeare
#51. I heard a bird so sing, Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the king.
William Shakespeare
#52. I am now of all humors that have showed themselves humors
since the old days of goodman Adam to the pupil age of this
present twelve o'clock at midnight.
William Shakespeare
#54. Why, courage then! what cannot be avoided
'Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.
William Shakespeare
#55. When I closed in "King Lear" I went into a period of depression for about three weeks, and every actor I've talked to who's ever played a major, major Shakespeare role has done this.
Frank Langella
#56. The very instant I saw you, did My heart fly to your service; there resides To make me slave to it ... mine unworthiness, that dare not offer What I desire to give, and much less take What I shall die to want.
William Shakespeare
#57. To move wild laughter in the throat of death?
It cannot be, it is impossible:
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.
William Shakespeare
#58. Anything one can do to provoke and inspire an interest in the works of Shakespeare in a young audience is fair game. Anything.
Tim Crouch
#59. To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.
William Shakespeare
#62. Tis often seen
Adoption strives with nature; and choice breeds
A native slip to us from foreign lands.
William Shakespeare
#63. William Shakespeare put it this way, Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.
Earl Nightingale
#64. Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths
William Shakespeare
#65. I grew up with Shakespeare, and there are so many wonderful teachings in those plays. The stories are all so unique and timeless. There is just so much learning in that body of work, and that is something I will always go back to.
Juliet Rylance
#67. This tune goes manly.
Come, go we to the King. Our power is ready;
Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth
Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above
Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may.
The night is long that never finds the day.
They exit.
William Shakespeare
#68. It would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare.
Virginia Woolf
#69. He made me feel unhinged ... like he could take me apart and put me back together again and again.
Chelsie Shakespeare
#71. I spent six years touring the world playing Shakespeare, Molire, Shaw, Goldsmith ... But I slowly came to realise that the people you are working with are as important as the parts you play, and that there were lots of interesting people working in film and T.V.
Stephen Mangan
#72. The city's legions of working men disagreed. They always had counted Harrison as one of their own, "Our Carter," even though he was a plantation-reared Kentucky man who had gone to Yale, spoke fluent French and German, and recited lengthy passages from Shakespeare.
Erik Larson
#73. Where is Polonius?
HAMLET
In heaven. Send hither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i' th' other place yourself. But if indeed you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.
William Shakespeare
#74. Miss Gregory took nearly everything. Her clothes. New girls don't have the privilege of wearing their own clothes. Her books. Socrates, Plato, Shakespeare? Much too stimulating. No wonder you have Ideas. Certainly, you don't wish to become a bluestocking!
Suzanne Lazear
#75. My meaning in saying he is a good man, is to have you understand me that he is sufficient.
William Shakespeare
#76. Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living.
William Shakespeare
#77. Actually, the language in Shakespeare is wonderfully musical. You need to hear the music to connect with the words.
Mandy Patinkin
#78. Every person has one particular time in his life when he is more beautiful than he is ever going to be again. For some it is at seven, for others at seventeen or seventy, and as Laura Fleischman read out loud from Shakespeare, I remember thinking that for her it was probably just then.
Frederick Buechner
#79. Forward, I pray, since we have come so far,
And be it moon, or sun, or what you please.
And if you please to call it a rush candle,
Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.
William Shakespeare
#80. As a genius St. Paul cannot be compared with either Plato or Shakespeare, as a coiner of beautiful similes he comes pretty low down in the scale, as a stylist his name is quite obscure--and as an upholsterer: well, I frankly admit I have no idea how to place him.
Soren Kierkegaard
#81. Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.
William Shakespeare
#82. Shakespeare, adrenal glands, professional bowling, and the bizarre reproductive patterns of wasps (along with teams of BBC cameraman to document them(
N.D. Wilson
#83. And 'tis a kind of good deed to say well:
And yet words are no deeds.
King Henry VIII. Act 3, Scene 2
William Shakespeare
#84. Come now, what masques, what dances shall we have
To wear away this long age of three hours
Between our after-supper and bedtime?
William Shakespeare
#85. I must to the barber's, monsieur, for methinks I am marvellous hairy about the face.
William Shakespeare
#86. We were, fair queen, /
Two lads that thought there was no more behind /
But such a day to-morrow as to-day, /
And to be boy eternal.
William Shakespeare
#87. Kenji Mizoguchi is to the cinema what Bach is to music, Cervantes is to literature, Shakespeare is to theatre, Titian is to painting: the very greatest.
Jean Douchet
#88. I had a very bad first experience of Shakespeare at school, and, now I'm determined to put that wrong right and just make Shakespeare as vivid and live as possible.
Michelle Gomez
#90. Bad is the trade that must play fool to sorrow,
Ang'ring itself and others.
William Shakespeare
#92. If she do bid me pack, I'll give her thanks
As though she bid me stay by her a week.
If she deny to wed, I'll crave the day
When I shall ask the banns, and when be married.
William Shakespeare
#93. God mark thee to His grace! Thou was the prettiest babe that e'er I nursed. And might I live to see thee married once, I have my wish.
William Shakespeare
#94. Peter Hall was just organizing the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was going to be an ensemble, it was going to be in repertory, it was going to have a home in London as well as in the Midlands, and all of those things were happening at that time.
Trevor Nunn
#95. I know not, sir, whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he did not, it seems to me that he missed the opportunity of his life.
James M. Barrie
#96. In my prayers every day, which are a combination of Hebrew prayers and Shakespeare and Sondheim lyrics and things people have said to me that I've written down and shoved in my pocket, I also say the name of every person I've ever known who's passed on.
Mandy Patinkin
#97. Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives
must die,
Passing through nature to eternity.
William Shakespeare
#98. She is never alone when she has Her Books. Books, to her, are Friends. Give her Shakespeare or Jane Austen, Meredith or Hardy, and she is Lost - lost in a world of her own. She sleeps so little that most of her nights are spent reading.
E.M. Delafield
#99. How much easier it is to be poor than rich.
Lois Leveen
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
