Top 100 What Shakespeare Quotes
#1. Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.
Susan Sontag
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. The great William Shakespeare said, "What's in a name?" He also said, "Call me Billy one more time and I will stab you with this ink quill.
Cuthbert Soup
#7. 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
#9. 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
#10. You don't know yet what money is. Money is power, when you have lived as long as I have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say? Put money in thy purse.
James Joyce
#11. 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
#12. From a selection of his other works, we might think him variously courtly, cerebral, metaphysical, melancholic, Machiavellian, neurotic, lighthearted, loving, and much more. Shakespeare was of course all these things - as a writer. We hardly know what he was as a person.
Bill Bryson
#13. 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
#14. What has been done in the world - the works of genius - cost nothing. There is no painful effort, but it is the spontaneous flowing of the thought. Shakespeare made his Hamlet as a bird weaves its nest.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#15. Why, courage then! what cannot be avoided
'Twere childish weakness to lament or fear.
William Shakespeare
#16. 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
#17. Benvolio: What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?
Romeo: Not having that, which, having, makes them short.
William Shakespeare
#18. The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly.
William Shakespeare
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. Good; and what of him?
ALEXANDER
They say he is a very man per se,
And stands alone.
CRESSIDA
So do all men, unless they are drunk, sick, or have no
legs.
William Shakespeare
#23. 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
#25. All men die in solitude; all values are degraded in a state of misery: that is what Shakespeare tells me
Eugene Ionesco
#26. 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
#28. Everyone feels loss and love and laughter. That's what connects humanity. It's why I love Shakespeare.
Stephanie Beatriz
#30. 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
#31. Call me what instrume you will,though you can fret me,yet you cannot play upon me.
William Shakespeare
#33. O Ceremony, show me but thy worth? What is thy soul of adoration? Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, Creating awe and fear in other men?
William Shakespeare
#34. For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause
William Shakespeare
#35. What if the greatest love story ever told was the wrong one?
Rebecca Serle
#36. O good Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story ...
O, I die, Horatio;
William Shakespeare
#37. Ne'er ask me what raiment I'll wear, for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet
nay, sometime more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the overleather.
William Shakespeare
#39. KING HENRY VI:
Would I were dead, if God's good will were so;
For what is in this world but grief and woe?
William Shakespeare
#41. And you know, I hate to admit this, but I don't always think in terms of Shakespeare. When I eat, I do. When I'm at a restaurant, I'll think, 'Hmm, what would Macbeth have ordered?'
Liev Schreiber
#42. 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
#44. Look, what a horse should have he did not lack, Save a proud rider on his back.
William Shakespeare
#45. 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
#46. In a thousand words I can have the Lord's Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, the Hippocratic Oath, a sonnet by Shakespeare, the Preamble to the Constitution, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and almost all of the Boy Scout Oath. Now exactly what picture were you planning to trade for all that?
Roy H. Williams
#47. Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.
William Shakespeare
#49. The most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is, to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company.
William Shakespeare
#50. What, no more ceremony? See, my women! Against the blown rose may they stop their nose That kneel'd unto the buds.
William Shakespeare
#53. What's this thing that gets between us and Shakespeare?
Al Pacino
#54. The devil knew what he did when he made men politic; he crossed himself by it.
William Shakespeare
#55. In his comic scenes, Shakespeare seems to produce, without labor, what no labor can improve.
Samuel Johnson
#56. If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,
By self-example mayst thou be denied.
William Shakespeare
#57. What wouldst thou do, old man?
Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak
When power to flattery bows?
William Shakespeare
#58. Marry, sir, she's the kitchen wench and all grease; and I know not what use to put her to but to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light.
William Shakespeare
#59. Virtue and genuine graces in themselves speak what no words can utter.
William Shakespeare
#60. The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to-morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before.
G.K. Chesterton
#61. In 1600, when Shakespeare's audience at the Globe heard 'Hamlet' for the first time, every one of them knew very well what it meant to be handed a cup of wine by a figure of authority and told to drink.
Neil MacGregor
#62. Sit down awhile; And let us once again assail your ears, That are so fortified against our story What we have two nights seen.
William Shakespeare
#63. Sweet recreation barred, what doth ensue but moody and dull melancholy, kinsman to grim and comfortless despair.
William Shakespeare
#64. What is the point of teaching how to analyse a poem or a piece of Shakespeare but not to analyse the Internet?
Beeban Kidron
#67. 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
#68. In the theatre, people talk. Talk, talk until the cows come home about journeys of discovery and about what Hazlitt thought of a line of Shakespeare. I can't stand it.
Anthony Hopkins
#70. Captain of our fairy band,
Helena is here at hand,
And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover's fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
William Shakespeare
#71. Werewolves and silver bullets!" Shakespeare coughed a quick laugh and shook his head. "Lord, what fools these mortals be!
Michael Scott
#72. Yet I am doubtful, for I am mainly ignorant. What place this is, and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments. Nor I know not
Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me,
For as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.
William Shakespeare
#73. What should a man do but be merry? For look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died within's two hours.
William Shakespeare
#74. O, then, what graces in my love do dwell, That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell!
William Shakespeare
#76. Shakespeare said pretty well everything and what he left out, James Joyce, with a judge from meself, put in.
Brendan Behan
#77. Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot. Take thou what course thou wilt.
William Shakespeare
#78. Ah, what a sign it is of evil life, Where death's approach is seen so terrible!
William Shakespeare
#79. If men could be contented to be what they are, there were no fear in marriage.
William Shakespeare
#80. Now a Protestant confronting a Catholic ghost is exactly Shakespeare's way of grappling with what was not simply a general social problem but one lived out in his own life.
Stephen Greenblatt
#82. What a pretty thing man is when he goes in his doublet and hose and leaves off his wit!
William Shakespeare
#83. What, with my tongue in your tail? nay, come again,
Good Kate; I am a gentleman.
William Shakespeare
#84. Sirrah, your Father's dead: And what will you do now? How will you live?
Son: As birds do, mother.
L. Macd: What with worms and flies?
Son: With what I get, I mean; and so do they.
William Shakespeare
#85. I considered several names, but Titania, a character from Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream', was best able to portray the image I wanted for what is a fantastically elegant and sexy yacht.
John Caudwell
#86. He that is robbed, not wanting what is stolen, him not know t, and he's not robbed at all.
William Shakespeare
#87. That happens a lot with Shakespeare. The women go after what they want; the men wind up suckered into things.
Gayle Forman
#88. Read o'er this And after, this, and then to breakfast with What appetite you have.
William Shakespeare
#91. 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
#92. What if Shakespeare had had a test audience for Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet?
Brendan Fraser
#93. Host: What say you to young Master Fenton? he capers, he
dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he
speaks holiday, he smells April and May: he will
carry't, he will carry't; 'tis in his buttons; he
will carry't.
William Shakespeare
#94. She liked to watch her father as he read, and to listen to the smoothly rolling tones; she felt no curiosity about what the words meant. It was only Shakespeare and she was used to him.
Stella Gibbons
#95. You have no idea how many men are spoiled by what is called education. For the most part, colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed. If Shakespeare had graduated at Oxford, he might have been a quibbling attorney, or a hypocritical parson.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#97. Keats himself spoke about how Shakespeare was capable of erasing himself completely from the characters he had created. As an actor, that is what I'm trying to do.
Ben Whishaw
#98. Why, what a wasp-stung and impatient fool
Art thou, to break into this woman's mood,
Tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own!
William Shakespeare
#99. Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark, what discord follows!
William Shakespeare
#100. I never publicise in advance what I'm going to be singing because I never quite know until I start. I often change my mind halfway through. I sometimes throw in stuff about politics or Shakespeare or do songs in Yiddish.
Mandy Patinkin
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