Top 100 To Shakespeare Quotes
#1. 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
#2. Corneille is to Shakespeare as a clipped hedge is to a forest.
Samuel Johnson
#3. My favorite play is Hamlet. It was my first love when it comes to Shakespeare, and I've read it and seen it performed more than just about every other Shakespeare play. I've had the "To be or not to be" monologue memorized since I was 15, and it's just really close to my heart.
Ian Doescher
#4. I think this [Gnomeo & Juliet] is the closest I ought to get to Shakespeare to be honest.
Matt Lucas
#5. With due apologies to Shakespeare, some people are born writers, some people achieve it after a lot of hard work, some people have a writing career thrust upon them. I am in that last group.
Amish Tripathi
#6. Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.
John Irving
#7. And to Shakespeare I owe my vision of the world as a theater, wherein all humans are acting out their parts.
James Broughton
#8. The world was to Shakespeare a great stage of fools on which he was utterly bewildered. His pregnant observations of life are not coordinated into any philosophy.
George Bernard Shaw
#9. I prefer a good pair of boots to Shakespeare.
Leo Tolstoy
#10. Juilliard is wonderful in that they don't pick just one way of working. They give you a palette. There is method acting. There is a lot of attention to Shakespeare and verse.
Christian Camargo
#11. There is nothing new, from Greek mythology to Shakespeare to every romcom ever made, we're just reimagining the same 12 story plots over and over again - so what makes people keep watching and listening? It's all about the character.
Jeremy Renner
#12. I think it's sad that movies and television have caused the theatre to fade as a popular art form. I hope to get young people into the theatre and expose them to Shakespeare.
Kelly McGillis
#13. Tales of power and ambition and intrigue and betrayal and desire - when you're telling those in a big way, you automatically want to go to Shakespeare.
Beau Willimon
#14. It is no exaggeration to say that the English Bible is, next to Shakespeare, the greatest work in English literature, and that it will have much more influence than even Shakespeare upon the written and spoken language of the English race.
Lafcadio Hearn
#15. I think going from doing TV and straight plays to Shakespeare is weird enough because you have this heightened language, and you are telling a story through metric poetry. But I think music is that place beyond poetry.
Tamsin Greig
#16. Shakespeare language is fantastic, and to be honest, you don't need to do anything to Shakespeare.
Sam Heughan
#17. I remain loyal to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert in music and to Shakespeare and Jane Austen in literature.
Anne Stevenson
#18. The biggest and most interesting crisis in the world is the human crisis, and it never gets boring. It goes back to Shakespeare. You don't need a gimmick; it's just man against man and their intolerance of each other.
Sylvester Stallone
#19. A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapours are to the traveller: he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way and sure to engulf him in the mire.
Samuel Johnson
#20. But they took readily to Shakespeare, as all children do when he is not made horrible with parsing and analysing.
George Orwell
#21. I try to imagine someone saying to Shakespeare, 'Relax!
Elias Canetti
#22. When I was 18 years old I went to Shakespeare Company, the school, and I wrote a poem about my leaves - I felt like a tree that had no leaves. That is the life at 18.
Alicia Silverstone
#23. It's extremely dangerous to compare anyone else to Shakespeare.
Kevin Spacey
#24. Programmed by quanta, physics gave rise first to chemistry and then to life; programmed by mutations and recombination, life gave rise to Shakespeare; programmed by experience and imagination, Shakespeare gave rise to Hamlet.
Seth Lloyd
#25. My soul always reverts to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There at least one feels that it's human beings talking. There people hate, people love, people murder their enemy and curse his descendants through all generations, there people sin.
Soren Kierkegaard
#26. What a tribute this is to art; what a misfortune this is for history.
(In reference to Shakespeare's 'Richard III')
Paul Murray Kendall
#27. Edith (the future Mrs. Teddy Roosevelt) developed a lifelong devotion to drama and poetry. "I have gone back to Shakespeare, as I always do," she would write seven decades later.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#28. I remember, the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never plotted out a line. My answer hath been, would he had blotted a thousand.
Ben Jonson
#29. I want to take a trip to Shakespeare's brain and vacation there with his thoughts may be I also start writing about twisted love and betrayals.
Megha Khare
#30. I was reading everything under the sun from music history to feminist literature to Shakespeare, which is why I'm not a complete idiot at this time.
Emilie Autumn
#31. I started out doing theater in New York. I used to go to Shakespeare in the Park a lot.
Clark Gregg
#32. 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
#34. 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
#35. Riotous madness,
To be entangled with those mouth-made vows,
Which break themselves in swearing!
William Shakespeare
#36. 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
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. Boy, this shall not excuse the injuries that
Thou hast done to me.
Therefore turn and draw.
William Shakespeare
#41. 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
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. For death remembered should be like a mirror,
Who tells us life's but breath, to trust it error.
William Shakespeare
#45. 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
#46. To persevere
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness: 'tis unmanly grief.
William Shakespeare
#47. We are not ourselves When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind To suffer with the body.
William Shakespeare
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. 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
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way:
William Shakespeare
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. Shakespeare has great ability to skirt around a subject and portray human nature.
Kelli O'Hara
#63. 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
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. When holy and devout religious men are at their beads, 'tis hard to draw them thence; so sweet is zealous contemplation.
William Shakespeare
#67. 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
#69. As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.
William Shakespeare
#70. 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
#72. 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
#73. Mechanic slaves
With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers, shall
Uplift us to the view.
William Shakespeare
#74. 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.
#75. The glowworm shows the matin to be near And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.
William Shakespeare
#76. To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
William Shakespeare
#77. 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
#78. World, world, O world! But that thy strange mutations make us hate thee/ Life would not yield to age.
William Shakespeare
#80. 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
#81. I heard a bird so sing, Whose music, to my thinking, pleased the king.
William Shakespeare
#82. 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
#84. Why, courage then! what cannot be avoided
'Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.
William Shakespeare
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. To move wild laughter in the throat of death?
It cannot be, it is impossible:
Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.
William Shakespeare
#88. 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
#89. To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.
William Shakespeare
#92. Tis often seen
Adoption strives with nature; and choice breeds
A native slip to us from foreign lands.
William Shakespeare
#93. 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
#94. Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths
William Shakespeare
#95. 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
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. He made me feel unhinged ... like he could take me apart and put me back together again and again.
Chelsie Shakespeare
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