Quotes by Shakespeare, William




Born ca. 1564 and died ca. 1616 during the Renaissance period (1450-1599). One of the greatest writers of all time, Shakespeare, the peerless poet of the Sonnets and the creator of such dramatic masterpieces as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and King Lear, is a playwright of paradigmatic originality. In his discussion of the Western literary canon, critic Harold Bloom declared: "Shakespeare and Dante are the center of the Canon because they excel all other Western writer in cognitive acuity, linguistic energy, and power of invention." However, one could go a step further and suggest that Shakespeare defines the Western canon because he transcends it. If Shakespeare, as Ben Jonson declared, "was not of an age, but for all time," the great dramatist, one could argue, spoke to the ultimate concerns of humankind, regardless of period or cultural tradition..

"Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale."

Shakespeare, William on life
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"Some men there are love not a gaping pig, some that are mad if they behold a cat, and others when the bagpipe sings I the nose cannot contain their urine."

Shakespeare, William on antipathy    Share

"Thou art all ice. Thy kindness freezes."

Shakespeare, William on antipathy    Share

"Let never day nor night unhallowed pass, but still remember what the Lord hath done."

Shakespeare, William on appreciation
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"The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."

Shakespeare, William on argument
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"In a false quarrel there is no true valor."

Shakespeare, William on argument    Share

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"I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct."

Shakespeare, William on argument    Share

"'Tis the soldier's life to have their balmy slumbers waked with strife."

Shakespeare, William on army and navy
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"Give every man your ear, but few thy voice. Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. [Hamlet]"

Shakespeare, William on listening
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"Wise men never sit and wail their loss, but cheerily seek how to redress their harms."

Shakespeare, William on losers and losing
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"Love sought is good, but given unsought is better."

Shakespeare, William on love
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"When love begins to sicken and decay it uses an enforced ceremony. [Julius Caesar]"

Shakespeare, William on love    Share

"To say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days."

Shakespeare, William on love
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"They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but Love."

Shakespeare, William on love
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"Love is too young to know what conscience is."

Shakespeare, William on love
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"Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs. Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers eyes. Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, a choking gall and a preserving sweet."

Shakespeare, William on love
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"Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love."

Shakespeare, William on love    Share

"But love is blind, and lovers cannot see What petty follies they themselves commit"

Shakespeare, William on love
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"Love bears it out even to the edge of doom."

Shakespeare, William on love
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"She's gone. I am abused, and my relief must be to loathe her."

Shakespeare, William on love
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"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety. Other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies."

Shakespeare, William on love
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"We that are true lovers run into strange capers."

Shakespeare, William on love
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"Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my King, He would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies."

Shakespeare, William on loyalty    Share

"This is the monstrosity in love, lady, that the will is infinite and the execution confined; that the desire is boundless, and the act a slave to limit."

Shakespeare, William on lust
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"O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper. I would not be mad."

Shakespeare, William on madness
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"Manhood is melted into courtesies, valor into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones, too."

Shakespeare, William on manners    Share

"The world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married."

Shakespeare, William on marriage    Share

"Your lordship, though not clean past your youth, have yet some smack of age in you, some relish of the saltiness of time."

Shakespeare, William on maturity    Share

"Report me and my cause aright."

Shakespeare, William on media    Share

"By medicine life may be prolonged, yet death will seize the doctor too."

Shakespeare, William on medicine
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"He is half of a blessed man. Left to be finished by such as she; and she a fair divided excellence, whose fullness of perfection lies in him."

Shakespeare, William on women
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"'Tis the mind that makes the body rich."

Shakespeare, William on mind
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"Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove."

Shakespeare, William on mind    Share

"Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows."

Shakespeare, William on misers and misery    Share

"To mourn a mischief that is past and gone is the next way to draw new mischief on."

Shakespeare, William on misfortunes
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"Affliction is enamoured of thy parts, and thou art wedded to calamity."

Shakespeare, William on misfortunes    Share

"For we which now behold these present days have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise."

Shakespeare, William on modern and modernism    Share

"Lord Bacon told Sir Edward Coke when he was boasting, The less you speak of your greatness, the more shall I think of it."

Shakespeare, William on modesty
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Shakespeare, William - 78px-First_Folio.jpeg - Engraved portrait of William Shakespeare by Martin Droeshout, from the First Folio of shakespeare's plays   Photos >>