27William Shakespeare is one of the most famous and beloved writers the world has ever seen. He was an English poet, playwright, and actor, and many consider him the greatest writer in the English language, and the greatest dramatist in the world. He lived between 1564 and 1616.
His greatest tragedies work include Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens, and Titus Andronicus. On the other hand, his best comedies are The Comedy of Errors, Cymbeline, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Cymbeline, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Tempest.
Thanks to such a vast number of iconic plays, there are countless famous quotes that are often used in everyday language, and in contemporary media. Shakespeare’s works are still some of the most performed and watched plays around the world, and there is not a soul that has not heard about his great plots and characters. In this article, we will go over his best and most iconic quotes, all coming from his timeless masterpieces.
- ‘To be, or not to be: that is the question.’
- ‘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.’
- ‘Now is the winter of our discontent.’
- ‘Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?’
- ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?’
- ‘Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.’
- ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.’
- ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!’
- ‘A man can die but once.’
- ‘If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’
- ‘Frailty, thy name is woman.’
- ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks’
- ‘I am one who loved not wisely but too well.’
- ‘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.’
- ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.’
- ‘Beware the Ides of March.’
- ‘If music be the food of love play on.’
- ‘Get thee to a nunnery.’
- ‘What’s in a name? A rose by any name would smell as sweet.’
- ‘The better part of valor is discretion’
- ‘All that glisters is not gold.’
- ‘To thine own self be true.’
- ‘Nothing will come of nothing.’
- ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears: I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.’
- ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’
- ‘Cry “havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war’
- ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be!’
- ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’
- ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
- ‘A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!’
- ‘Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.’
- ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’
- ‘The fault, dear Brutus, lies not within the stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.’
- ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.’
- ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.’
- ‘But, for my own part, it was Greek to me.’
- ‘Off with his head!’
- ‘We know what we are, but know not what we maybe.’
- ‘Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.’
- ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.’
- ‘Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.’
- ‘The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones.’
- ‘This is very midsummer madness.’
- ‘We have seen better days.’
- ‘I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.’
- ‘I am a man more sinned against than sinning.’
- ‘Brevity is the soul of wit.’
- ‘We have seen better days.’
Quotes on life lessons and time
- ‘What light through yonder window breaks.’
- ‘This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle… This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.’
- ‘Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.’
- ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’
- ‘It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.’
- ‘Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.’
- ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’
- ‘Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.’
- ‘Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.’
- ‘With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.’
- ‘I would give all my fame for a pot of ale, and safety.’
- ‘Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.’
- ‘Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.’
- ‘To do a great right do a little wrong.’
- ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.’
- ‘The lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact.’
- ‘It is the stars, The stars above us, govern our conditions.’
- ‘God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.’
- ‘There is no darkness but ignorance.’
- ‘We know what we are, but know not what we may be.’
- ‘The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.’
- ‘But love is blind, and lovers cannot see.’
- ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!’
- This above all: to thine own self be true.
- ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.’
- ‘When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.’
- ‘The miserable have no other medicine, but only hope.’
- ‘Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.’
- ‘The robbed that smiles steal something from the thief.’
- ‘No legacy is so rich as honesty.’
- ‘A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.’
- O serpent heart hid with a flowering face!
- ‘Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave?’
- ‘Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical, dove feather raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of the divinest show, just opposite to what thou justly seemest – A dammed saint, an honorable villain!’
- Lord Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
- Hamlet: Words, words, words.
- Lord Polonius: What is the matter, my lord?
- Hamlet: Between who?
- Lord Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.
- ‘This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave overhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?’
- ‘Who knows himself a braggart, Let him fear this, for it will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass.’
- ‘All causes shall give way: I am in blood
- Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,
- Returning were as tedious as go o’er.’
- ‘Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
- Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
- Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
- ’Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been a slave to thousands;
- But he that filches from me my good name
- Robs me of that which not enriches him,
- And makes me poor indeed.’
- ‘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.’
- ‘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.’
- ‘To do were as easy as to know what we’re good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes’ palaces.’
- ‘By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap to pluck bright honor from the pale-faced moon, or dive into the bottom of the deep, where fathom-line could never touch the ground, and pluck up drowned honor by the locks.’
- ‘He doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus, and we petty men walk under his huge legs, and peep about to find ourselves dishonorable graves.’
- ‘But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.’
- ‘Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
- The wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
- Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
- Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,—
- For a charm of powerful trouble,
- Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
- Double, double toil and trouble;
- Fire burn, and caldron bubble.’
- ‘Love me or hate me, both are in my favor. If you love me, I’ll always be in your heart… If you hate me, I’ll always be in your mind.’
- ‘And therefore, — since I cannot prove a lover,
- To entertain these fair well-spoken days, —
- I am determined to prove a villain,
- And hate the idle pleasures of these days.’
- ‘Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
- May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
- Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
- Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
- But be the serpent under it.’
- Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,
- ‘Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,
- And for thy maintenance; commits his body
- To painful labor, both by sea and land;
- To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,
- Whilst thou li’ st warm at home, secure and safe;
- And craves no other tribute at thy hands
- But love, fair looks, and true obedience-
- Too little payment for so great a debt.
- Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
- Even such a woman oweth to her husband;
- And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
- And no obedient to his honest will,
- What is she but a foul contending rebel,
- And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
- I ashamed that women are so simple
- ‘To offer war where they should kneel for peace,
- Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway,
- When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.
- Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth,
- Unapt to toil and trouble in the world,
- But that our soft conditions, and our hearts,
- Should well agree with our external parts?’
- ‘Yet but three come one more.
- Two of both kinds make up four.
- Ere she comes curst and sad.
- Cupid is a knavish lad.
- Thus to make poor females mad.’
- ‘And since you know you cannot see yourself,
- so well as by reflection, I, your glass,
- will modestly discover to yourself,
- that of yourself which you yet know not of.’
