Shakespeare

"None but himself can be his parallel."

"I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream. Past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was... There's no man can tell what. Methought I was... Methought I had... Man is but a patched fool is he will offer to say what I had."

"Come, my lord, and in our flight. Tell me how it came this night. That I sleeping here was found. With these mortals on the ground."

"Up and down, up and down, I will lead them up and down. I am feared in field and town. Goblin lead them up and down."

"[last lines] If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber'd here. While these visions did appear. And this weak and idle theme, No more yielding but a dream, Gentles, do not reprehend: If you pardon we will mend. Else the Puck a liar call. Give me your hands, if we be friends, And Robin shall restore amends."

"[repeated line] Oh, spite. Oh, hell."

"I am your spaniel. And Demetrius, the more you beat me, I will fawn on you. Use me - but as your spaniel. Spurn me, strike me, neglect me, lose me, but give me leave, unworthy as I am, to follow you."

"The course of true love never did run smooth."

"Merry and tragical? Tedious and brief? That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow."

"No epilogue, I pray you, for your play needs no excuse. Never excuse, for when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed."

"Hold on to Your Heart. Cupid is Armed and Dangerous."

"Love makes fools of us all."

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."

"Get to the Bottom of Love."

"Kevin Kline - Nick Bottom"

"Michelle Pfeiffer - Titania"

"Rupert Everett - Oberon"

"Stanley Tucci - Puck"

"Calista Flockhart - Helena"

"Anna Friel - Hermia"

"Christian Bale - Demetrius"

"Dominic West - Lysander"

"David Strathairn - Theseus"

"Sophie Marceau - Hippolyta"

"Roger Rees - Peter Quince"

"Max Wright - Robin Starveling"

"Gregory Jbara - Snug"

"Bill Irwin - Tom Snout"

"Sam Rockwell - Francis Flute"

"Bernard Hill - Egeus"

"John Sessions - Philostrate"

"What cannot be eschewed must be embraced"

"Beauty itself doth of itself persuade The eyes of men without an orator."

"Time's glory is to calm contending kings, To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light."

"That deep torture may be called a hell, When more is felt than one hath power to tell."

"On a day — alack the day! — Love, whose month is ever May, Spied a blossom passing fair Playing in the wanton air"

"Crabbed age and youth cannot live together: Youth is full of pleasure, age is full of care"

"I gyve unto my wief my second best bed with the furniture"

"Good frend for Jesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare Blese be the man that spares these stones And curst be he that moves my bones"

"I was in love with my bed."

"Is she not passing fair?"

"How use doth breed a habit in a man!"

"Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!"

"Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends."

"She's beautiful, and therefore to be woo'd; She is a woman, therefore to be won."

"The fox barks not, when he would steal the lamb."

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

"Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar-school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used; and, contrary to the king, his crown, and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill."

"The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on."

"O God! methinks, it were a happy life, To be no better than a homely swain; To sit upon a hill, as I do now, To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, Thereby to see the minutes how they run: How many make the hour full complete, How many hours bring about the day, How many days will finish up the year, How many years a mortal man may live."

"Down, down to hell; and say I sent thee thither."

"Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York."

"Off with his head!"

"A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

"What light through yonder window breaks?"

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet."

"O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?"

"The course of true love never did run smooth."

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind."

"If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces."

"It is a wise father that knows his own child."

"All that glisters is not gold."

"I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means, warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? 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?"

"The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life."

"A man can die but once."

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown."

"As merry as the day is long."

"Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever; One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never."

"Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps."

"Beware the ides of March."

"Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once."

"Cry 'Havoc!,' and let slip the dogs of war."

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones."

"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."

"'The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.'"

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all: to thine ownself be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

"Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice."

"The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!"

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

"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!"

"To be or not to be, that is the question."

"If music be the food of love, play on."

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em."

"Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit and lost without deserving."

"Of one that lov'd not wisely but too well."

"We have seen better days."

"Nothing can come of nothing."

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child!"

"I am a man, More sinn'd against than sinning."

"The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burnt on the water."

"Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day."

"Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand?"

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! 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."

"All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand."

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date"

"So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

"Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments."

"Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust."

"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."

"Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows."

"We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep."

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. The saying goes you live by the sword you shall die by the sword...It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar."

"Nothing is more common than the wish to be remarkable."

"Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong."

"However wickedness outstrips men, it has no wings to fly from God."

"He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee. If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself."

"The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away."

"There is plenty of time to sleep in the grave."

"When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry."

"The vision that impels feminists to action was the vision of the Grandmothers' society, the society that was captured in the words of the sixteenth-century explorer Peter Martyr nearly five hundred years ago. It is the same vision repeated over and over by radical thinkers of Europe and America, from François Villon to John Locke, from William Shakespeare to Thomas Jefferson, from Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, from Benito Juarez to Martin Luther King, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Judy Grahn, from Harriet Tubman to Audre Lorde, from Emma Goldman to Bella Abzug, from Malinalli to Cherrie Moraga, and from Iyatiku to me. That vision as Martyr told it is of a country where there are "no soldiers, no gendarmes or police, no nobles, kings, regents, prefects, or judges, no prisons, no lawsuits... All are equal and free.""

"when you look for the motivations you always go to the basic instincts, to the basic emotions, the basic things that have moved humankind always. That's what all writers write about, ultimately. What did Shakespeare write about? Jealousy, love, sex, power, greed, the same stuff that soap operas and the Bible are made of. It's always the same."

"Can you imagine if somebody told him in the 16th century, 'Listen, you're going to inspire a black girl in the 20th century in Arkansas, who will be a mute"?"

"I keep saying, Shakspeare, Shakspeare, you are as obscure as life is."

"Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is a part of an Englishman's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them every where, one is intimate with him by instinct."

"Even if you do not realise it now, the time will come when you will be thankful that you were steeped in Shakespeare as boys. In him we not only have, as Sir Gerald Du Maurier said here not long ago, perhaps the greatest man the world has ever seen, but one who had a profound knowledge of human nature and of the world. Shakespeare was one of those few poets in whom we find the magic which comes straight from heaven, and which is the prerogative of the very greatest: such magic as we find in the poetry of Keats, in the first scene of the last act of The Merchant of Venice and throughout the sonnets."

"Shakespeare's plays, no matter of what country he may be writing, are redolent of our own soil and of our own country people. The habit of thought and the outlook of Shakespeare’s country people and of those wise men, Shakespeare’s fools, may be found to-day in our rural counties."

"Shakespeare will not make us better, and he will not make us worse, but he may teach us how to overhear ourselves when we talk to ourselves. Subsequently, he may teach us how to accept change, in ourselves as in others, and perhaps even the final form of change. Hamlet is death's ambassador to us, perhaps one of the few ambassadors ever sent out by death who does not lie to us about our inevitable relationship with that undiscovered country. The relationship is altogether solitary, despite all of tradition's obscene attempts to socialize it."

"I love that moment in Joyce when his friend, the painter, asks him the desert-island question about which of the two greatest Western writers to keep: "I should like to answer Dante, but I would have to take the Englishman, because he is richer!" He is, it's the truth. He is richer than Homer, which is astonishing. Everybody in The Divine Comedy, except Dante the Pilgrim, has achieved their final form. But Shakespeare is change. In that sense, he always remains an Ovidian poet, and in the same sense, anti-Platonic."

"History adds that before or after dying he found himself in the presence of God and told Him: "I who have been so many men in vain want to be one and myself." The voice of the Lord answered from a whirlwind: "Neither am I anyone; I have dreamt the world as you dreamt your work, my Shakespeare, and among the forms in my dream are you, who like myself are many and no one.""

"Shakespeare is a bard of mass destruction."

"Shakespeare's drama, where ideal women walk in worship, and the baser sort find sympathy."

"There, Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world. Oh, eyes sublime With tears and laughter for all time."

"If Shakespeare required a word and had not met it in civilized discourse, he unhesitatingly made it up."

"Know the same favour which the former knew, A shrine for Shakspeare—worthy him and you? Yes—it shall be—the magic of that name Defies the scythe of time, the torch of flame."

"Shakespeare's name, you may depend upon it, stands absurdly too high and will go down. He had no invention as to stories, none whatever. He took all his plots from old novels, and threw their stories into dramatic shape... That he threw over whatever he did write some flashes of genius, nobody can deny; but this was all."

"My object has been to dramatise, like the Greeks (a modest phrase), striking passages of history, as they did of history and mythology. You will find all this very unlike Shakspeare; and so much the better in one sense, for I look upon him to be the worst of models, though the most extraordinary of writers."

"Consider now, if they asked us, Will you give up your Indian Empire or your Shakespeare, you English: never have had any Indian Empire, or never have had any Shakespeare? Really it were a grave question. Official persons would answer doubtless in official language; but we, for our part too, should not we be forced to answer: Indian Empire, or no Indian Empire; we cannot do without Shakespeare! Indian Empire will go, at any rate, some day; but this Shakespeare does not go, he lasts forever with us; we cannot give up our Shakespeare!"

"The first play I ever saw was a Shakespeare play... The great rolling emotion somehow comes through. So it was personal. But I think also if you're English and English literature is the thing, you can't help it. In Shakespeare the more I read the more I see the amount of things that come from Shakespeare or come via Shakespeare to the English cannot be exaggerated, and you find it everywhere, it's like the air you breathe. And so one's categories of character are so much the ones that Shakespeare created."

"The souls most fed with Shakespeare's flame Still sat unconquered in a ring, Remembering him like anything."

"The greatest genius that perhaps human nature has yet produced, our myriad-minded Shakespeare."

"He is of no age — nor, I may add, of any religion, or party, or profession. The body and substance of his works came out of the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind."

"He was not only a great poet, but a great philosopher."

"The true description of us is the complex, ever-changing pattern of interactions of billions of them [neurons]... The abbreviated and approximate shorthand that we employ every day to describe human behavior is a smudged caricature of our true selves. "What a piece of work is a man!" said Shakespeare. Had he been living today he might have given us the poetry we so sorely need to celebrate all these remarkable discoveries."

"I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me."

"'I'm always ill after Shakespeare,' said Mrs Wititterly. 'I scarcely exist the next day; I find the reaction so very great after a tragedy, my lord, and Shakespeare is such a delicious creature.'"

"But Shakespear's Magick could not copy'd be, Within that Circle none durst walk but he."

"To begin then with Shakespeare; he was the man who of all Modern, and perhaps Ancient Poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the Images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learn'd; he needed not the spectacles of Books to read Nature; he look'd inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of Mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches; his serious swelling into Bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of the poets."

"If I would compare him Jonson] with Shakespeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakespeare the greater wit."

"Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets; Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing. I admire him, but I love Shakespeare."

"I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?"

"Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third."

"What point of morals, of manners, of economy, of philosophy, of religion, of taste, of the conduct of life, has he not settled? What mystery has he not signified his knowledge of? What office, or function, or district of man's work, has he not remembered? What king has he not taught state, as Talma taught Napoleon? What maiden has not found him finer than her delicacy? What lover has he not outloved? What sage has he not outseen? What gentleman has he not instructed in the rudeness of his behavior?"

"England's genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame."

"The passages of Shakespeare that we most prize were never quoted until within this century."

"Ultimately, Anthony Burgess's emphasis on the multiplicity of meanings latent in the text of Shakespeare's life foregrounds his own appropriation of Shakespeare … Clearly this is not an inconsistency on Burgess's part but a deliberate pointer at the inevitability of appropriating any given text, particularly that most irresistible one of Shakespeare's life."

"Do you know how they are going to decide the Shakespeare-Bacon dispute? They are going to dig up Shakespeare and dig up Bacon; they are going to set their coffins side by side, and they are going to get Tree to recite Hamlet to them. And the one who turns in his coffin will be the author of the play."

"I'm thinking "Great English wordsmith," my enemies and crew are thinking: "Shake…spear!""

"But my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live."

"The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good — in spite of all the people who say he is very good."

"Far from the sun and summer-gale, In thy green lap was Nature's Darling laid."

"For there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey."

"Shakespear has in this play shewn himself well versed in history and state-affairs. Coriolanus is a store-house of political commonplaces. Any one who studies it may save himself the trouble of reading Burke's Reflections, or Paine's Rights of Man, or the Debates in both Houses of Parliament since the French Revolution or our own. The arguments for and against aristocracy or democracy, on the privileges of the few and the claims of the many, on liberty and slavery, power and the abuse of it, peace and war, are here very ably handled, with the spirit of a poet and the acuteness of a philosopher. Shakespear himself seems to have had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question, perhaps from some feeling of contempt for his own origin; and to have spared no occasion of baiting the rabble. What he says of them is very true: what he says of their betters is also very true, though he dwells less upon it."

"This figure that thou here seest put, It was for gentle Shakespeare cut, Wherein the graver had a strife With Nature, to out-do the life: O could he but have drawn his wit As well in brass, as he has hit His face; the print would then surpass All that was ever writ in brass: But since he cannot, reader, look Not on his picture, but his book."

"Soul of the Age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare... Thou art a monument, without a tomb, And art alive still while thy book doth live, And we have wits to read, and praise to give."

"He was not of an age, but for all time!"

"I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a thousand"."

"There was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned."

"He was honest, and of an open and free nature[, and] had an excellent fantasy, brave notions, and gentle expressions."

"He that tries to recommend him by select Quotations, will succeed like the Pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his House to Sale, carried a Brick in his Pocket as a Specimen."

"Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind but in one composition. Almost all his plays are divided between serious and Ludicrous characters and they sometimes produce sorrow and sometimes laughter. That this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature."

"Yet it must be at last confessed, that as we owe every thing to him [Shakespeare], he owes something to us; that, if much of his praise is paid by perception and judgment, much is likewise given by custom and veneration. We fix our eyes upon his graces, and turn them from his deformities, and endure in him what we should in another loath or despise."

"I never quite despair and I read Shakspeare — indeed I shall I think never read any other Book much [...] I am very near Agreeing with Hazlit that Shakspeare is enough for us."

"He has left nothing to say about nothing or any thing."

"At once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."

"Shakespeare led a life of Allegory; his works are the comments on it."

"The sense of place has to do with everything. One of the mottos that has given me a lot of help and inspiration is remembering that somewhere I think it's in The Tempest-Shakespeare said that one of the goals of the writer and the artist is to give to airy nothing local habitation and a name. The Tempest is a play about a place, about finding a Brave New World. And it's about human beings maybe getting another chance again and going off to an island where they could figure out what it means to start community, or find out what it is to love. So, that phrase-to give to airy nothing local habitation and a name. I've decided that what that means is that abstract ideas and values are nothing. They're invisible, they're not dramatic, and they're not interesting unless you can localize them, can give them physical manifestation, can write about an actual place. You have to ground your ideas. We have to embody ideas in our characters and act them out in life. Ideas about altruism or a vision about a Brave New World. In art, what I think he's saying is to write about an actual place, write flesh-and-blood people, give them all ideas and standards. And then see whether they can take the test of a physical place, see whether their ideas hold up as they try to live in real life."

"England must be true to herself: that is the burden of Shakespeare's unsentimental patriotism."

"Such evil is often in Shakespeare felt as inhuman and bestial; it is—or should be—un-English; and the central symbolism to which Shakespeare's English warriors regularly appeal before battle is Saint George, the dragon-vanquisher. In Henry VI Talbot in a speech of national daring boasts he will celebrate Saint George's feast in France, and in the civil warfare of the second and third parts both sides cry on God and Saint George before battle."

"Shakespeare, after a long line of outwardly non-historical plays, plays not obviously concerned with England's destiny at all, yet each...closely concerned with the deepest and darkest issues raised by consideration of that destiny in his earlier work, after all this, Shakespeare writes, as his last play, Henry VIII. His bark has come to harbour. He returns to a national theme, set nearer his own day than any previous attempt, and deeply loads it with orthodox Christian feeling. Here the extravagances and profundities of the great sequence come, at last, to rest."

"Shakespeare, at the youth of Great Britain's imperial history, is necessarily fascinated by the accomplished imperialism of ancient Rome. He feels England now as inheriting the great destiny of Rome... You can feel Shakespeare's sense of Rome's supremacy beside the new strength of Britain; which strength, however, must pay due honour to that Roman greatness which is its prototype. The meaning is clearer if we return to the Soothsayer's vision: he saw the Roman eagle as dissolving into the sunbeams of Britain."

"Shakespeare is steadily preparing a synthesis of religious mysticism with national purpose; and this synthesis is not actually accomplished in the King himself, but rather in the royal child, Elizabeth... [T]he massive play [Henry VIII] ends with the christening ceremony of the baby Elizabeth, over whom Cranmer speaks the final prophecy, Shakespeare's last word to the England he loved... Every tragic insight, every penetrating sting of satire, every deepest religious intuition, orthodox or otherwise, of the greater plays, every lyric love of England's natural sweetness, is subdued within this last, almost ritualistic, offering by Shakespeare of himself and his deepest poetic wisdom to Elizabeth and her successor James I... [S]urely here, if never elsewhere, we can feel that this prophecy is offered...to the essential sovereignty, the golden thread in England's story, that line of kings in Macbeth stretching out "to the crack of doom", handed down from his day to ours. Macbeth was recalled, and Cranmer's lines forecast, by the "emblems" used at Anne Bullen's coronation: holy oil, Edward the Confessor's crown, the rod and the "bird of peace"... The conclusion to Henry VIII is no mere record of an historic past, but rather the one comprehensive statement in our literature of that peace towards which the world labours and for which Great Britain fights."

"Shakespeare has throughout sounded, as has no other great poet or dramatist on record, the note of royalty. His is a royal world. Shakespeare's royalistic thinking is, for the most part, patriotic, and his work from time to time spreads its wings in national prophecy. Royalty and England tend to involve each other, and these in turn involve strenuous themes of war and peace, order and disorder, conflicts of personal ambition and communal necessity, contrasts of tyranny and justice, the whole stamped by the chivalric symbol of Saint George and aspiring to Christian sanctions. This Shakespearian royalty, conceived in the reign of Elizabeth I, is not dead; it has lived since, within the story of Great Britain, and it is alive today, in the reign of Elizabeth II."

"Shakespeare's drama, with its fanfares and ceremonial, abounds in kingly ritual; and his people speak, move, act royally. Villains or heroes, it is no matter; it all lies deeper than ethic. We have for long talked of the Crown as the link binding an empire of free communities: that is true, and it is a great conception, herald and pattern, it may be, of a yet greater."

"We have watched kings falling in country after country, and it is likely that the works of Shakespeare have themselves done much to preserve our own intuition and understanding of royalty."

"Always in Shakespeare royalty aspires to be a Christian power; it is, or symbolizes, Christ in power."

"Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's; Therefore on him no speech!"

"When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder That such trivial people should muse and thunder In such lovely language."

"Some of Shakspeare's plays I have never read; while others I have gone over perhaps as frequently as any unprofessional reader. Among the latter are Lear, Richard Third, Henry Eighth, Hamlet, and especially Macbeth. I think nothing equals Macbeth. It is wonderful. Unlike you gentlemen of the profession, I think the soliloquy in Hamlet commencing "O, my offence is rank surpasses that commencing "To be, or not to be." But pardon this small attempt at criticism."

"This vision comes to me when I unfold The volume of the Poet paramount, Whom all the muses loved, not one alone;— Into his hands they put the lyre of gold, And, crowned with sacred laurel at their fount, Placed him as Musagetes on their throne."

"I spoke of women teaching women's literature courses who said that they could not teach Black women's poetry because it was so totally outside of their experience. That's bullshit because you teach Shakespeare and, God knows, that's outside of your experience. But you have to have learned to enter the work. You must delve into it and see what it tells you about yourself."

"On this planet the reputation of Shakespeare is secure. When life is discovered elsewhere in the universe and some interplanetary traveler brings to this new world the fruits of our terrestrial culture, who can imagine anything but that among the first books carried to the curious strangers will be a Bible and the works of WIlliam Shakespeare."

"Dolt & ass that I am I have lived more than 29 years, & until a few days ago, never made close acquaintance with the divine William. Ah, he's full of sermons-on-the-mount, and gentle, aye, almost as Jesus. I take such men to be inspired. I fancy that this moment Shakspeare in heaven ranks with Gabriel, Raphael and Michael. And if another Messiah ever comes twill be in Shakespeare's person."

"And so sepulchr'd, in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die."

"For some reason, I really enjoyed the histories and tragedies of Shakespeare not the comedies. Today, I marvel at the fact that we never questioned Shakespeare's deification of the ruling class, or his marginalization of the masses either as gullible crowds or as jesters. We had enough intelligence to do so, but we were, ideologically, under the captivity of colonial educational propaganda."

"Of all English literature I was exposed to, Shakespeare's tragedies moved most. I could recite soliloquies by Macbeth, Hamlet, Portia, Shylock, King Lear, Cordelia with great feeling. I think it was the music of the lines, the sound of the words, that excited me."

"The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays."

"Were Shakespeare around to write a play about our times, perhaps his opening line to the Plutocracy would be "Get thee to the Oligarchy. Blend yourselves together and thou shalt rule invincible forever after.""

"The best thing I could say in honour of Shakespeare, the man, is that he believed in Brutus and cast not a shadow of suspicion on the kind of virtue which Brutus represents! It is to him that Shakespeare consecrated his best tragedy—it is at present still called by a wrong name,—to him and to the most terrible essence of lofty morality. Independence of soul!—that is the question at issue! No sacrifice can be too great there: one must be able to sacrifice to it even one's dearest friend, though he be also the grandest of men, the ornament of the world, the genius without peer,—if one really loves freedom as the freedom of great souls, and if this freedom be threatened by him:—it is thus that Shakespeare must have felt! The elevation in which he places Cæsar is the most exquisite honour he could confer upon Brutus; it is thus only that he lifts into vastness the inner problem of his hero, and similarly the strength of soul which could cut this knot!—And was it actually political freedom that impelled the poet to sympathy with Brutus,—and made him the accomplice of Brutus? Or was political freedom merely a symbol for something inexpressible? Do we perhaps stand before some sombre event or adventure of the poet's own soul, which has remained unknown, and of which he only cared to speak symbolically? What is all Hamlet-melancholy in comparison with the melancholy of Brutus!—and perhaps Shakespeare also knew this, as he knew the other, by experience! Perhaps he also had his dark hour and his bad angel, just as Brutus had them!—But whatever similarities and secret relationships of that kind there may have been, Shakespeare cast himself on the ground and felt unworthy and alien in presence of the aspect and virtue of Brutus:—he has inscribed the testimony thereof in the tragedy itself. He has twice brought in a poet in it, and twice heaped upon him such an impatient and extreme contempt, that it sounds like a cry,—like the cry of self-contempt. Brutus, even Brutus loses patience when the poet appears, self-important, pathetic, and obtrusive, as poets usually are,—persons who seem to abound in the possibilities of greatness, even moral greatness, and nevertheless rarely attain even to ordinary uprightness in the philosophy of practice and of life. "He may know the times, but I know his temper,—away with the jigging fool!"—shouts Brutus. We may translate this back into the soul of the poet that composed it."

"When we speak of the aim and Art observable in Shakespeare's works, we must not forget that Art belongs to Nature; that it is, so to speak, self-viewing, self-imitating, self-fashioning Nature. The Art of a well-developed genius is far different from the Artfulness of the Understanding, of the merely reasoning mind. Shakspeare was no calculator, no learned thinker; he was a mighty, many-gifted soul, whose feelings and works, like products of Nature, bear the stamp of the same spirit; and in which the last and deepest of observers will still find new harmonies with the infinite structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and senses of man. They are emblematic, have many meanings, are simple and inexhaustible, like products of Nature; and nothing more unsuitable could be said of them than that they are works of Art, in that narrow mechanical acceptation of the word."

"Shakespeare — the nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God."

"EDMUND (sits down opposite his father - contemptuously). Yes, facts don't mean a thing, do they? What you want to believe, that's the only truth! (Derisively.) Shakespeare was an Irish Catholic, for example. TYRONE (stubbornly). So he was. The proof is in his plays."

"Children are made to learn bits of Shakespeare by heart, with the result that ever after they associate him with pedantic boredom. If they could meet him in the flesh, full of jollity and ale, they would be astonished, and if they had never heard of him before they might be led by his jollity to see what he had written. But if at school they had been inoculated against him, they will never be able to enjoy him. [...] Shakespeare did not write with a view to boring school-children; he wrote with a view to delighting his audiences. If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him."

"Shakespearean language is a bizarre super-tongue, alien and plastic, twisting, turning, and forever escaping. It is untranslatable, since it knocks Anglo-Saxon root words against Norman and Greco-Roman importations sweetly or harshly, kicking us up and down rhetorical levels with witty abruptness. No one in real life ever spoke like Shakespeare's characters. His language does not "make sense," especially in the greatest plays. Anywhere from a third to a half of every Shakespearean play, I conservatively estimate, will always remain under an interpretive cloud. Unfortunately, this fact is obscured by the encrustations of footnotes in modern texts, which imply to the poor cowed student that if only he knew what the savants do, all would be as clear as day. Every time I open Hamlet, I am stunned by its hostile virtuosity, its elusiveness and impenetrability. Shakespeare uses language to darken. He suspends the traditional compass points of rhetoric, still quite firm in Marlowe, normally regarded as Shakespeare's main influence. Shakespeare's words have "aura." This he got from Spenser, not Marlowe."

"Who can measure the worth of a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo or Beethoven in dollars and cents?"

"I sent for some dinner and there dined, Mrs. Margaret Pen being by, to whom I had spoke to go along with us to a play this afternoon, and then to the King's Theatre, where we saw 'Midsummer's Night's Dream', which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life."

"He is not so much an imitator, as an instrument, of nature; and 'tis not so just to say that he speaks from her as that she speaks through him."

"had all the speeches been printed without the very names of the persons, I believe one might have applied them with certainty to every speaker."

"'tis plain he had much reading at least, if they will not call it learning. Nor is it any great matter, if a man has knowledge, whether he has it from one language or from another."

"The shape of the Globe gives words power, but you're the wordsmith! The one true genius; the only one clever enough to do it. … Trust yourself. When you're locked away in your room, the words just come, don't they, like magic. Words, the right sound, the right shape, the right rhythm, words that last forever. That's what you do, Will. You choose perfect words. Do it. Improvise!"

"He seems to have been sent essentially to take universal and equal grasp of the human nature; and to have been removed, therefore, from all influences which could in the least warp or bias his thoughts. It was necessary that he should lean no way; that he should contemplate, with absolute equality of judgment, the life of the court, cloister, and tavern, and be able to sympathize so completely with all creatures as to deprive himself, together with his personal identity, even of his conscience, as he casts himself into their hearts. He must be able to enter into the soul of Falstaff or Shylock with no more sense of contempt or horror than Falstaff or Shylock themselves feel for or in themselves; otherwise his own conscience and indignation would make him unjust to them; he would turn aside from something, miss some good, or overlook some essential palliation. He must be utterly without anger, utterly without purpose; for if a man has any serious purpose in life, that which runs counter to it, or is foreign to it, will be looked at frowningly or carelessly by him. Shakespere was forbidden of Heaven to have any plans. To do any good or get any good, in the common sense of good, was not to be within his permitted range of work. Not, for him, the founding of institutions, the preaching of doctrines, or the repression of abuses. Neither he, nor the sun, did on any morning that they rose together, receive charge from their Maker concerning such things. They were both of them to shine on the evil and good; both to behold unoffendedly all that was upon the earth, to burn unappalled upon the spears of kings, and undisdaining, upon the reeds of the river."

"The English stage might be considered equally without rule and without model when Shakspeare arose. The effect of the genius of an individual upon the taste of a nation is mighty; but that genius, in its turn, is formed according to the opinions prevalent at the period when it comes into existence. Such was the case with Shakspeare. Had he received an education more extensive, and possessed a taste refined by the classical models, it is probable that he also, in admiration of the ancient Drama, might have mistaken the form for the essence, and subscribed to those rules which had produced such masterpieces of art. Fortunately for the full exertion of a genius, as comprehensive and versatile, as intense and powerful, Shakspeare had no access to any models of which the commanding merit might have controlled and limited his own exertions. He followed the path which a nameless crowd of obscure writers had trodden before him; but he moved in it with the grace and majestic step of a being of a superior order; and vindicated for ever the British theatre from a pedantic restriction to classical rule. Nothing went before Shakspeare which in any respect was fit to fix and stamp the character of a national Drama; and certainly no one will succeed him, capable of establishing, by mere authority, a form more restricted than that which Shakspeare used."

"As divinest Shakespeare's might Fills Avon and the world with light, Like omniscient power, which he Imaged 'mid mortality."

"We not only open the classics to re-create the past; we also use them to calibrate the present. Look at Shakespeare. I dream of doing a Restless Shakespeare; in fact, the name of this series is already a mission statement. There is arguably no more reprinted author in the English language. Do we need another Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and The Tempest? No doubt we do. He is a kaleidoscope that fluctuates depending on who is looking through it. There is the Elizabethan Shakespeare, the Victorian, the modern, the postmodern, the postcolonial, and so on. And there is also a restless Shakespeare, capable of conveying the perspective of a world always in transit and reorganized at all times—and at all costs—by outsiders. That’s the Shakespeare I’m after, one that lives in English but becomes an emblem of a world without a center."

"The two main Pillars of our Civilization, Jesus and Shakespeare said: "Nothing shall be impossible to Humans" (Jesus) "Impossibility is only seemingly impossible" (Shak.)"

"Æschylus is above all things the poet of righteousness. "But in any wise, I say unto thee, revere thou the altar of righteousness": this is the crowning admonition of his doctrine, as its crowning prospect is the reconciliation or atonement of the principle of retribution with the principle of redemption, of the powers of the mystery of darkness with the coeternal forces of the spirit of wisdom, of the lord of inspiration and of light. The doctrine of Shakespeare, where it is not vaguer, is darker in its implication of injustice, in its acceptance of accident, than the impression of the doctrine of Æschylus. Fate, irreversible and inscrutable, is the only force of which we feel the impact, of which we trace the sign, in the upshot of Othello or King Lear. The last step into the darkness remained to be taken by "the most tragic" of all English poets. With Shakespeare — and assuredly not with Æschylus — righteousness itself seems subject and subordinate to the masterdom of fate: but fate itself, in the tragic world of Webster, seems merely the servant or the synonym of chance."

"Why Shakespeare lends itself so well to film is because he wrote movies."

"Knowing the theory of anything is contrasted with know-how in all the arts...Beethoven..Michelangelo..Shakespeare, all great exponents of know-how, probably knew how to manipulate their instruments to achieve the desired results long before they knew the theory of their art. Perhaps some of them never bothered to learn the theory. On the other hand, there are many who know the theory better than these, but who lack know-how....Although we acquire the skill of understanding words by experience, so that we know the correlations between them and things, between words and other words, and between words and feelings and actions, we do not do it by inductive reasoning. Nor must we think that we do it by deductive reasoning... In the main, words are cues rather than clues."

"Shakespeare is a savage with sparks of genius which shine in a horrible night."

"The poet of England, he gave to the love of country, to patriotism as nowadays we call it, a voice which never shall be stilled. His histories are, and will ever be, the epic of our race."

"This Booke When Brasse and Marble fade, shall make thee looke Fresh to all Ages."

"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."

"Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask—Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge."

"Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie A little nearer Spenser, to make room For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb."

""With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart," once more! Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!"

"If I say that Shakespeare is the greatest of intellects, I have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakespeare's intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of."

"Voltaire and Shakespeare! He was all The other feigned to be. The flippant Frenchman speaks: I weep; And Shakespeare weeps with me."

"When great poets sing, Into the night new constellations spring, With music in the air that dulls the craft Of rhetoric. So when Shakespeare sang or laughed The world with long, sweet Alpine echoes thrilled Voiceless to scholars' tongues no muse had filled With melody divine."

"Now you who rhyme, and I who rhyme, Have not we sworn it, many a time, That we no more our verse would scrawl, For Shakespeare he had said it all!"

"If we wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning we may study his commentators."

"Mellifluous Shakespeare, whose enchanting Quill Commandeth Mirth or Passion, was but Will."

"The stream of Time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakspere."

"Then to the well-trod stage anon If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, Warble his native woodnotes wild."

"What needs my Shakespeare for his honored bones The labors of an age in piled stones? Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid Under a starre-y-pointing pyramid? Dear son of Memory, great heir of fame, What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hath built thyself a livelong monument."

"Shakspeare (whom you and every playhouse bill Style the divine! the matchless! what you will), For gain, not glory, wing'd his roving flight, And grew immortal in his own despite."

"Few of the university pen plaies well, they smell too much of that writer Ovid and that writer Metamorphosis and talk too much of Proserpina and Jupiter. Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down. Aye, and Ben Jonson too. O that B. J. is a pestilent fellow, he brought up Horace giving the poets a pill, but our fellow, Shakespeare, hath given him a purge that made him beray his credit."

"Shikspur, Shikspur! Who wrote it? No, I never read Shikspur. Then you have an immense pleasure to come."

"Scorn not the Sonnet. Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honours; with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart."

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge."

"The occasionally expressed popular belief that Shakespeare must have helped prepare the translation of the Bible completed for King James in 1610 is based solely on the circumstances that a few famous passages from the translation and from Shakespeare's tragedies are the only specimens of Jacobian English most people ever hear. Rudyard Kipling, however, composed a whimsical short story, Proofs of Holy Writ, in which one of the translators consults Shakespeare and Jonson, and in 1970, Anthony Burgess pointed out that in the King James Bible the 46th word of the 46th psalm, translated in Shakespeare's 46th year, is "shake", while the 46th word from the end (if one cheats by leaving out the last cadential word "", is "spear"."

"Over the past two centuries, there has hardly been an author, certainly in the English-speaking world, who has commanded greater reverence than Shakespeare. … There is only one text in the English language that carries comparable prestige to the works of Shakespeare: the Bible, in particular in its most renowned version, the King James Bible, otherwise known as the Authorized Version, of 1611. … In view of the persistent juxtaposition of these two Anglophone cultural icons … it is hardly surprising that they also feature together in a number of fictions of Shakespeare's life, in the form of the fantasy of the Bard as co-translator of the Authorized Version. The originator of this motif seems to have been Rudyard Kipling. In his story "Proofs of Holy Writ," Kipling imagines Shakespeare in the process of revising parts of the Authorized Version with the help of Ben Jonson."

"Burgess's Shakespeare is not a patient empire builder or visionary, but rather an unhappy man caught in an unenviable position, at the midlife crisis age of forty-six. … Burgess's point may well be that literary quality is not always recognized during one's lifetime … due to an ill-advised display of his wit in the presence of the king, Shakespeare is currently out of favor. … Particularly ingenious in Burgess's story is the way Shakepeare even hides his name in the text of the psalm. As he is forty-six years of age, he chooses Psalm 46; he counts to the forty-sixth word, replaces it by "shake"' then he starts at the end, counts forty-six words backwards (leaving out of the account the cadential "'"), and changes that word into "speare." The surprising thing is, that the evidence shoring up this highly unlikely scenario is in itself authentic: in Psalm 46 AV, the forty-sixth word really is "shake", the forty-sixth word from the end (not counting "selah") being spear. Although Burgess's Shakespeare revises the psalm for wholly selfish ends, out of defiance and sinful pride, he does not thereby lose our sympathy. Unlike Kiping's self-confident sahib, he is not a superman that can lead nations; rather, in his everyday struggle with political realities, an unhappy marriage, and uncomprehending neighbors, he is a modern antihero whom we cannot begrudge his one moment of triumph. … For Burgess, art is the result of suffering between the hammer of what is and the anvil of what should be. He projects that vision on Shakespeare, whose drive for self-realization, impeded by his surroundings, finds an outlet in this act of creativity."

"To me, Shakespeare lives if we keep performing his plays. He dies, when we stop performing them."

"Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none"

"But love that comes too late, Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried, To the great sender turns a sour offence."

"If thou remember'st not the slightest folly That ever love did make thee run into, Thou hast not lov'd."

"We that are true lovers run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly."

"It is as easy to count atomies as to resolve the propositions of a lover."

"But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak? Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much."

"O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love! But it cannot be sounded; my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the bay of Portugal."

"No sooner met but they looked, no sooner looked but they loved, no sooner loved but they sighed, no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason."

"Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love. It is to be all made of sighs and tears;— It is to be all made of faith and service;— It is to be all made of fantasy."

"This is the very ecstasy of love Whose violent property foredoes itself, And leads the will to desperate undertakings."

"Doubt thou the stars are fire. Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar. But never doubt I love."

"He is far gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this."

"Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; When little fears grow great, great love grows there."

"Forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum."

"Love, whose month is ever May, Spied a blossom passing fair, Playing in the wanton air: Through the velvet leaves the wind, All unseen can passage find; That the lover, sick to death, Wish'd himself the heaven's breath."

"By heaven, I do love: and it hath taught me to rhyme, and to be melancholy."

"You would for paradise break faith and troth, And Jove, for your love, would infringe an oath."

"A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind. A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound."

"Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste: For valour, is not Love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?"

"And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony."

"But love is good, and lovers cannot view themselves unto thee. The pretty follies that themselves commit."

"Yet I have not seen So likely an ambassador of love; A day in April never came so sweet, To show how costly summer was at hand, As this fore-spurrer comes before his lord."

"And swearing till my very roof was dry With oaths of love."

"Good night, sweet friend: thy love ne'er alter, till thy sweet life end"

"Ay me! for aught that I ever could read, Could ever hear by tale or history, The course of true love never did run smooth."

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."

"Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity In least speak most, to my capacity."

"When you depart from me sorrow abides, and happiness takes his leave."

"Speak low, if you speak love."

"Friendship is constant in all other things Save in the office and affairs of love: Therefore, all hearts in love use their own tongues; Let every eye negotiate for itself And trust no agent."

"Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps."

"Upon this hint I spake; She lov'd me for the dangers I had pass'd, And I lov'd her, that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have us'd: Here comes the lady; let her witness it."

"Perdition catch my soul, But I do love thee! and when I love thee not, Chaos is come again."

"What! keep a week away? seven days and nights? Eight score eight hours? and lovers' absent hours, More tedious than the dial eight score times? O, weary reckoning!"

"If heaven would make me such another world Of one entire and perfect chrysolite, I'ld not have sold her for it."

"Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate Nor set down aught in malice: then must you speak Of one that loved not wisely, but too well; Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought, Perplexed in the extreme: of one, whose hand Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away, Richer than all his tribe: of one, whose subdued eyes, Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinal gum."

"From love's weak childish bow she lives unharmed."

"Love is a smoke rais'd with the fume of sighs; Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in a lover's eyes; Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears: What is it else? a madness most discreet, A choking gall and a preserving sweet."

"Steal love's sweet bait from fearful hooks."

"Speak but one rhyme, and I am satisfied; Cry but—"Ay me!" pronounce but "love" and "dove.""

"See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O, that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek!"

"O, Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou, Romeo?"

"For stony limits cannot hold love out, And what love can do that dares love attempt."

"At lovers' perjuries, They say, Jove laughs."

"My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee The more I have, for both are infinite."

"Love goes toward love, as school-boys from their books, But love from love, toward school with heavy looks."

"It is my soul that calls upon my name; How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, Like soft music to attending ears."

"'Tis almost morning; I would have thee gone: And yet no further than a wanton's bird; Who lets it hop a little from her hand, Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gyves, And with a silk thread plucks it back again, So loving-jealous of his liberty."

"Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow."

"Love's heralds should be thoughts, Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams, Driving back shadows over louring hills; Therefore do nimble-pinion'd doves draw love, And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings."

"Therefore love moderately; long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow."

"Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, Take him, and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine, And all the world will be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish sun."

"Sweet, above thought I love thee."

"They say all lovers swear more performance than they are able, and yet reserve an ability that they never perform."

"For to be wise, and love Exceeds man's might; that dwells with gods above."

"The noblest hateful love that e'er I heard of."

"If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die."

"O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou, That notwithstanding thy capacity Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, Of what validity and pitch soe'er, But falls into abatement and low price, Even in a minute!"

"Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know."

"Then let thy love be younger than thyself, Or thy affection cannot hold the bent."

"She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, Feed on her damask cheek; she pin'd in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy She sat like patience on a monument, Smiling at grief."

"Love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better."

"For he was more than over shoes in love."

"Love is your master, for he masters you; And he that is so yoked by a fool, Methinks, should not be chronicled for wise."

"And writers say, as the most forward bud Is eaten by the canker ere it blow, Even so by love the young and tender wit Is turn'd to folly, blasting in the bud, Losing his verdure even in the prime."

"How wayward is this foolish love, That, like a testy babe, will scratch the nurse And presently, all humbled, kiss the rod."

"O, how this spring of love resembleth Th' uncertain glory of an April day, Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, And by and by a cloud takes all away!"

"Didst thou but know the inly touch of love, Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow, As seek to quench the fire of love with words. quotesbook.com"

"I do not seek to quench your love's hot fire, But qualify the fire's extreme rage, Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason."

"Except I be by Sylvia in the night, There is no music in the nightingale."

"They do not love that do not show their love."

"Love keeps his revels where there are but twain."

"What 'tis to love? how want of love tormenteth?"

"Love comforteth like sunshine after rain"

"Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain"

"There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned."

"I know not why I love this youth; and I have heard you say, Love's reason's without reason."

"I can express no kinder sign of love, than this kind kiss."

"Love for thy love, and hand for hand I give."

"For where thou art, there is the world itself, and where thou art not, desolation"

"Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee."

"Not that I lov'd Caesar less, but that I lov'd Rome more."

"Though last, not least in love!"

"Upon thy cheek I lay this zealous kiss, As seal to the indenture of my love"

"Which of you shall we say doth love us most? That we our largest bounty may extend Where nature doth with merit challenge."

"Love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues; Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues."

"There is no creature loves me, And if I die, no soul shall pity me."

"Love that well which thou must leave ere long."

"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; O no! It is an ever-fixèd mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wand'ring bark whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool. Though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov'd, I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd."

"Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, Passing through nature to eternity."

"He was an man, take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again."

"I do not to set my life at a pin's fee; And, for my soul, what can it do to that, Being a thing immortal as itself?"

"Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd; No reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head."

"To die:—to sleep: No more; and, by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished."

"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause."

"Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life; But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?"

"We should profane the service of the dead, To sing a requiem and such rest to her As to peace-parted souls."

"O proud death, What feast is toward in thine eternal cell, That thou so many princes at a shot So bloodily hast, struck?"

"When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come."

"That we shall die we know; 'tis but the time And drawing days out, that men stand upon."

"He that cuts off twenty years of life Cuts off so many years of fearing death."

"We must die, Messala: With meditating that she must die once, I have the patience to endure it now."

"Be absolute for death; either death or life Shall thereby be the sweeter."

"What's yet in this, That bears the name of life? Yet in this life Lie hid more thousand deaths: yet death we fear, That makes these odds all even."

"Dar'st thou die? The sense of death is most in apprehension; And the poor beetle that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great As when a giant dies."

"If I must die I will encounter darkness as a bride, And hug it in mine arms."

"Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot."

"To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence roundabout The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those, that lawless and incertain thought Imagine howling; 'tis too horrible!"

"The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death."

"Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; The worst is death, and death will have his day."

"Let's choose executors and talk of wills: And yet not so, for what can we bequeath, Save our desposed bodies to the ground?"

"Nothing can we call our own but death And that small model of the barren earth Which serves as paste and cover to our bones."

"Within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king, Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp."

"And there at Venice gave His body to that pleasant country's earth, And his pure soul unto his captain Christ, Under whose colours he had fought so long."

"Go thou, and fill another room in hell. That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire, That staggers thus my person. Exton, thy fierce hand Hath with thy king's blood stain'd the king's own land. Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high; Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die."

"Death lies on her, like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field."

"How oft, when men are at the point of death, Have they been merry! which their keepers call A lightning before death."

"Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty; Thou art not conquer'd; beauty's ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks, And death's pale flag is not advanced there."

"Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death."

"Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust."

"Come, let us take a muster speedily: Doomsday is near; die all, die merrily."

"And we shall feed like oxen at a stall, The better cherish'd, still the nearer death."

"A man can die but once; we owe God a death."

"What, is the old king dead? As nail in door."

"A' made a finer end and went away an it had been any christom child; a' parted even just between twelve and one, e'en at the turning o' th' tide: for after I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields. "How now, Sir John?" quoth I: "what, man! be o' good cheer." So a' cried out—"God, God, God!" three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him a' should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet."

"Ah, what a sign it is of evil life, Where death's approach is seen so terrible!"

"He dies, and makes no sign."

"My sick heart shows That I must yield my body to the earth, And, by my fall, the conquest to my foe. Thus yields the cedar to the axe's edge, Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle; Under whose shade the ramping lion slept: Whose top-branch overpeer'd Jove's spreading tree, And kept low shrubs from winter's powerful wind."

"Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust? And, live we how we can, yet die we must."

"He gave his honours to the world again, His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace."

"Death, death; oh, amiable, lovely death! Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smilest."

"We cannot hold mortality's strong hand."

"Have I not hideous death within my view, Retaining but a quantity of life Which bleeds away, even as a form of wax Resolveth from its figure 'gainst the fire?"

"O, our lives' sweetness! That we the pain of death would hourly die Rather than die at once!"

"Nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it."

"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well; Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, Can touch him further."

"I am a tainted wether of the flock, Meetest for death; the weakest kind of fruit Drops earliest to the ground, and so let me."

"Here is my journey's end, here is my butt, And very sea-mark of my utmost sail."

"Who pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood With that grim ferryman which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night."

"'Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord, When men are unprepared and look not for it."

"The wills above be done! but I would fain die a dry death."

"He that dies pays all debts."

"Come away, come away, death, And in sad cypress let me be laid; Fly away, fly away, breath: I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, Oh, prepare it! My part of death no one so true Did share it."

"The youth that you see here I snatch'd one half out of the jaws of death."

"For he being dead, with him is beauty slain, And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again."

"In me thou see'st the twilight of such day, As after sunset fadeth in the west; Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, To love that well which thou must leave ere long."

"It was great pity, so it was, That villanous saltpetre should be digg'd Out of the bowels of the harmless earth, Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd So cowardly; and but for these vile guns He would himself have been a soldier."

"We must have bloody noses and crack'd crowns, And pass them current too. God's me, my horse!"

"The fire-eyed maid of smoky war All hot and bleeding will we offer them."

"Tut, tut; good enough to toss; food for powder, food for powder; they'll fill a pit as well as better."

"The arms are fair, When the intent of bearing them is just."

"Our battle is more full of names than yours, Our men more perfect in the use of arms, Our armour all as strong, our cause the best; Then reason will our hearts should be as good."

"That I may truly say with the hook-nosed fellow of Rome, I came, I saw, and overcame."

"O war! thou son of hell, Whom angry heavens do make their minister, Throw in the frozen bosoms of our part Hot coals of vengeance! Let no soldier fly. He that is truly dedicate to war Hath no self-love, nor he that loves himself, Hath not essentially but by circumstance The name of valour."

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead."

"From camp to camp through the foul womb of night The hum of either army stilly sounds."

"The armourers, accomplishing the knights, With busy hammers closing rivets up, Give dreadful note of preparation."

"There are few die well that die in a battle."

"He which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart; his passport shall be made."

"It is war's prize to take all vantage."

"Sound trumpets! let our bloody colours wave! And either victory, or else a grave."

"They shall have wars and pay for their presumption."

"The cannons have their bowels full of wrath, And ready mounted are they to spit forth Their iron indignation 'gainst your walls."

"Now for the bare-pick'd bone of majesty Doth dogged war bristle his angry crest And snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace."

"Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars And brought in matter that should feed this fire; And now 'tis far too huge to be blown out With that same weak wind which enkindled it."

"I drew this gallant head of war, And cull'd these fiery spirits from the world, To outlook conquest and to win renown Even in the jaws of danger and of death."

"When the hurly-burly's done, When the battle's lost and won."

"Hang out our banners on the outward walls."

"Blow, wind! come, wrack! At least we'll die with harness on our back."

"Lay on, Macduff, And damn'd be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!""

"The bay-trees in our country all are wither'd And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; The pale-fac'd moon looks bloody on the earth And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change; Rich men look sad and ruffians dance and leap, The one in fear to lose what they enjoy, The other to enjoy by rage and war."

"Let's march without the noise of threat'ning drum."

"He is come to open The purple testament of bleeding war."

"Grim-visag'd war hath smoothed his wrinkled front."

"Thus far into the bowels of the land Have we march'd without impediment."

"Conscience avaunt, Richard's himself again: Hark! the shrill trumpet sounds, to horse, away, My soul's in arms, and eager for the fray."

"Put in their hands thy bruising irons of wrath, That they may crush down with heavy fall The usurping helmets of our adversaries."

"Fight, gentlemen of England! fight, bold yeomen! Draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head! Spur your proud horses hard, and ride in blood; Amaze the welkin with your broken staves!"

"And all the gods go with you! upon your sword Sit laurel victory! and smooth success Be strew'd before your feet!"

"All was lost, But that the heavens fought."

"Give me the cups; And let the kettle to the trumpet speak, The trumpet to the cannoneer without, The cannons to heavens, the heavens to earth."

"Cæsar's spirit, ranging for revenge, With Até by his side come hot from hell, Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice Cry "Havoc," and let slip the dogs of war."

"Follow thy drum; With man's blood paint the ground, gules, gules; Religious canons, civil laws are cruel; Then what should war be?"

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women, meerely Players; They haue their Exits and their Entrances, And one man in his time playes many parts, His Acts being seuen ages. At first the Infant, Mewling, and puking in the Nurses armes: Then, the whining Schoole-boy with his Satchell And shining morning face, creeping like snaile Vnwillingly to schoole. And then the Louer, Sighing like Furnace, with a wofull ballad Made to his Mistresse eye-brow. Then, a Soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the Pard, Ielous in honor, sodaine, and quicke in quarrell, Seeking the bubble Reputation Euen in the Canons mouth: And then, the Iustice In faire round belly, with good Capon lin'd, With eyes seuere, and beard of formall cut, Full of wise sawes, and moderne instances, And so he playes his part. The sixt age shifts Into the leane and slipper'd Pantaloone, With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side, His youthfull hose well sau'd, a world too wide, For his shrunke shanke, and his bigge manly voice, Turning againe toward childish trebble pipes, And whistles in his sound. Last Scene of all, That ends this strange euentfull historie, Is second childishnesse, and meere obliuion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans euery thing."

"Dies annorum nostrorum in ipsis septuaginta anni si autem multum octoginta anni et quod amplius est labor et dolor quoniam transivimus cito et avolavimus(Dies annorum nostrorum in ipsis septuaginta anni si autem in potentatibus octoginta anni et amplius eorum labor et dolor quoniam supervenit mansuetudo et corripiemur)"

"The dayes of oure age are thre score yeares and ten: and though men be so stronge that they come to foure score yeares, yet is theyr strength then but laboure and sorowe: so soone passeth it awaye, and we are gone."

"The time of our life is threescore years and ten, and if they be of strength, fourscore years: yet their strength is but labor and sorrow: for it is cut off quickly, and we flee away."

"Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.""

"A boy, before he cometh to man’s estate, and while he is still a child, getteth and loseth his rampart of teeth within the first seven years. When god bringeth the second seven to a close, the signs of budding manhood begin to show. In the third period, a downy beard appeareth, though the limbs have not reached their full growth, and the boyish bloom of the complexion fadeth. In the fourth period of seven years, every man is at the prime of his physical strength. ... The fifth period is the season for a man to bethink him of marriage and seek offspring against the future. In the sixth, experience of every sort carrieth his mind on to perfection, and he feeleth no longer the same inclination to the wild pranks of youth. In the seventh seven, he is at his prime in mind and tongue, and also in the eighth, the two together making fourteen years. In the ninth period, though he still retaineth some force, he is feebler both in wisdom and in speech and faileth of great achievement. If a man attaineth to the full measure of the tenth period, the fate of death, if it come upon him, cometh not untimely."

"Seven ages, first puking and mewling, Then very pissed off with one's schooling, Then fucks, and then fights, Then judging chaps' rights; Then sitting in slippers; then drooling."

"What a piece of work is 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? Man delights not me; no, nor Woman neither;"

"Why, what should be the fear? I do not set my life at a pin's fee."

",—that is the question:— Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?—To die, to sleep,— No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to,—'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;— To sleep, perchance to dream:—ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death,— The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns,—puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know naught of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action."

"And a man's life's no more than to say "One.""

"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together."

"O excellent! I love long life better than figs."

"And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything."

"And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe. And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot; And thereby hangs a tale."

"Her father lov'd me; oft invited me; Still question'd me the story of my life, From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes, That I have pass'd."

"It is silliness to live when to live is torment; and then have we a prescription to die when death is our physician."

"Put out the light, and then put out the light: If I quench thee, thou flaming minister, I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me. But once put out thy light, Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume. When I have pluck’d thy rose, I cannot give it vital growth again, It must needs wither. I’ll smell it on the tree."

"O gentlemen, the time of life is short! To spend that shortness basely were too long, If life did ride upon a dial's point, Still ending at the arrival of an hour."

"Let life be short: else shame will be too long."

"The sands are number'd that make up my life; Here must I stay, and here my life must end."

"So farewell to the little good you bear me. Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness! This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him; The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, And then he falls, as I do. I have ventur'd, Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders, This many summers in a sea of glory, But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride At length broke under me, and now has left me, Weary and old with service, to the mercy Of a rude stream that must for ever hide me. Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye! I feel my heart new open'd. O, how wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours! There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to, That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, More pangs and fears than wars or women have; And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again."

"I cannot tell what you and other men Think of this life; but, for my single self, I had as lief not be as live to be In awe of such a thing as I myself."

"Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself."

"This day I breathed first: time is come round, And where I did begin there shall I end; My life is run his compass."

"Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man."

"Thy life's a miracle."

"When we are born, we cry, that we are come To this great stage of fools."

"That but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, We'ld jump the life to come."

"Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant, There's nothing serious in mortality: All is but toys; renown, and grace is dead; The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees Is left this vault to brag of."

"So weary with disasters, tugg'd with fortune, That I would set my life on any chance, To mend, or be rid on't."

"Out, out, brief candle! 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."

"I bear a charmed life."

"Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep."

"Life is a shuttle."

"Who will believe my verse in time to come, If it were filled with your most high deserts? Though yet heaven knows it is but as a tomb Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts."

"Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

"O! if, I say, you look upon this verse, When I perhaps compounded am with clay, Do not so much as my poor name rehearse; But let your love even with my life decay; Lest the wise world should look into your moan, And mock you with me after I am gone."

"The earth can have but earth, which is his due; My spirit is thine, the better part of me: So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life, The prey of worms, my body being dead; The coward conquest of a wretch's knife, Too base of thee to be remembered. The worth of that is that which it contains, And that is this, and this with thee remains."

"Your name from hence immortal life shall have, Though I, once gone, to all the world must die: The earth can yield me but a common grave, When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie. Your monument shall be my gentle verse, Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read; And tongues to be your being shall rehearse, When all the breathers of this world are dead; You still shall live, such virtue hath my pen, Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of men."

"This silence for my sin you did impute, Which shall be most my glory being dumb; For I impair not beauty being mute, When others would give life, and bring a tomb. There lives more life in one of your fair eyes Than both your poets can in praise devise."

"But do thy worst to steal thyself away, For term of life thou art assured mine; And life no longer than thy love will stay, For it depends upon that love of thine. Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs, When in the least of them my life hath end. I see a better state to me belongs Than that which on thy humour doth depend: Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind, Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie."

"Rise, resty Muse, my love's sweet face survey, If Time have any wrinkle graven there; If any, be a satire to decay, And make Time's spoils despised every where. Give my love fame faster than Time wastes life, So thou prevent'st his scythe and crooked knife."

"O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds."

""I hate" she altered with an end, That followed it as gentle day, Doth follow night, who like a fiend From heaven to hell is flown away. "I hate", from hate away she threw, And saved my life, saying "not you"."

"If it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue."

"Like a dull actor now, I have forgot my part, and I am out, Even to a full disgrace."

"Out, out, brief candle! 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."

"As in a theatre, the eyes of men, After a well-grac'd actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious."

"I can counterfeit the deep tragedian; Speak and look back, and pry on every side, Tremble and start at wagging of a straw, Intending deep suspicion."

"A beggarly account of empty boxes."

"And, like a strutting player, whose conceit Lies in his hamstring, and doth think it rich To hear the wooden dialogue and sound 'Twixt his stretch'd footing and the scaffoldage."

"Good, my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time: after your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live."

"Is it not monstrous that this player here, But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, Could force his soul so to his own conceit That from her working all his visage wann'd."

"What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her? What would he do. Had he the motive and the cue for passion That I have? He would drown the stage with tears."

"I have heard That guilty creatures sitting at a play, Have, by the very cunning of the scene, Been struck so to the soul that presently They have proclaim'd their malefactions; For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak. With most miraculous organ."

"The play's the thing Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness."

"Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature."

"O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably."

"Come, sit down, every mother's son, and rehearse your parts."

"Is there no play, To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?"

"A play there is, my lord, some ten words long, Which is as brief as I have known a play; But by ten words, my lord, it is too long, Which makes it tedious."

"The following Tales are meant to be submitted to the young reader as an introduction to the study of Shakespeare, for which purpose his words are used whenever it seemed possible to bring them in; and in whatever has been added to give them the regular form of a connected story, diligent care has been taken to select such words as might least interrupt the effect of the beautiful English tongue in which he wrote: therefore, words introduced into our language since his time have been as far as possible avoided."

"...it was the only way in which could be given to them a few hints and little foretastes of the great pleasure which awaits them in their elder years, when they come to the rich treasures from which these small and valueless coins are extracted."

"It has been wished to make these Tales easy reading for very young children... For young ladies too, it has been the intention chiefly to write... it is hoped they will find that the [original] in this way will be much better relished and understood from their having some notion of the general story from one of these imperfect abridgments..."

"What these Tales shall have been to the young readers, that and much more it is the writers' wish that the true Plays of Shakespeare may prove to them in older years—enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach courtesy, benignity, generosity, humanity: for of examples, teaching these virtues, his pages are full."

"Often, after a hard day's teaching, my father used to have his breakfast in bed next morning, when we children were allowed to scramble up to the counterpane and lie around him to see what new book he had bought for us, and listen to his description and explanation of it. Never can I forget the boundless joy and interest with which I heard him tell about the contents of two volumes he had just brought home, as he showed me the printed pictures in them. They were an early edition of 'Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare.' And what a vast world of new ideas and new delights that opened to me! a world in which I have ever since much dwelt, and always with supreme pleasure and admiration."

"I cannot tell exactly when I began Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare"; but I know that I read them at first with a child's understanding and a child's wonder."

"[Mary] says you saw her writings about the other day, and she wishes you should know what they are. She is doing for Godwin's bookseller twenty of Shakespeare's plays, to be made into children's tales. Six are already done by her; to wit, The Tempest, A Winter's Tale, Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Cymbeline. The Merchant of Venice is in forwardness. I have done Othello and Macbeth, and mean to do all the tragedies. I think it will be popular among the little people, besides money. It is to bring in sixty guineas. Mary has done them capitally I think you'd think."

"Mary is just stuck fast in All's Well that Ends Well. She complains of having to set forth so many female characters in boys' clothes. She begins to think Shakespeare must have wanted imagination! I, to encourage her (for she often faints in the prosecution of her great work), flatter her with telling how well such and such a play is done. But she is stuck fast, and I have been obliged to promise to assist her."

"My Tales are to be published in separate story-books. I mean in single stories, like the children's little shilling books. I cannot send you them in manuscript, because they are all in the Godwins' hands; but one will be published very soon, and then you shall have it all in print. ... Charles has written Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, and has begun Hamlet; you would like to see us, as we often sit writing on one table (but not on one cushion sitting), like Hermia and Helena in the Midsummer Night's Dream; or rather, like an old literary Darby and Joan, I taking snuff and he groaning all the while and saying he can make nothing of it, which he always says till he has finished, and then he finds out he has made something of it."

"It was like reading fairy tales, an intimate experience not surpassed by my later reading of the original plays."

"Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?"

"Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night? Do you make an ale-house of my lady’s house, that you squeak out your coziers’ catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?"

"This is my lady's hand these be her very C's, her U's and her T's and thus makes she her great P's."

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em."

"I think we do know the sweet Roman hand."

"Put thyself into the trick of singularity."

"Feste: What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild-fowl? Malvolio: That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird."

"Why you have given me such clear lights of favour, Bade me come smiling and cross-garter'd to you, To put on yellow stockings and to frown Upon Sir Toby and the lighter people; And, acting this in an obedient hope, Why have you suffer'd me to be imprison'd, Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest, And made the most notorious geck and gull That e'er invention play'd on? tell me why."

"I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you."

"Oh, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distempered appetite."

"Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"

"If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourself into stitches, follow me. Yond gull Malvolio is turned heathen, a very renegado; for there is no Christian, that means to be saved by believing rightly, can ever believe such impossible passages of grossness. He's in yellow stockings."

"Truly, madam, he holds Belzebub at the staves's end as well as a man in his case may do: has here writ a letter to you; I should have given't you to-day morning, but as a madman's epistles are no gospels, so it skills not much when they are delivered."

"[W]e feel a regard for Malvolio, and sympathize with his gravity, his smiles, his cross-garters, his yellow stockings, and imprisonment in the stocks."

"Who after this will say that Shakespeare's genius was only fitted for comedy? Yet after reading other parts of this play, and particularly the garden-scene where Malvolio picks up the letter, if we were to say that his genius for comedy was less than his genius for tragedy, it would perhaps only prove that our own taste in such matters is more saturnine than mercurial. [...] The letter and his comments on it are equally good. If poor Malvolio's treatment afterwards is a little hard, poetical justice is done in the uneasiness which Olivia suffers on account of her mistaken attachment to Cesario, as her insensibility to the violence of the Duke's passion is atoned for by the discovery of Viola's concealed love of him."

"Fry's Malvolio is a dessicated [sic] mandarin who makes a fool of himself because he mistakenly thinks he has a chance of love, more than of social advancement."

"This is no dusky Malvolio with wand and cap of office, but a Nigerian maiden in her ornate, though scanty, wedding finery."

"What I have done is yours, what I have to do is yours, being part in all I have devoted yours."

"Beauty itself doth of itself persuade The eyes of men without an orator."

"The aim of all is but to nurse the life With honour, wealth, and ease, in waning age; And in this aim there is such thwarting strife, That one for all, or all for one we gage; As life for honour in fell battles’ rage; Honour for wealth; and oft that wealth doth cost The death of all, and all together lost."

"Let fair humanity abhor the deed That spots and stains love's modest snow-white weed."

"What win I if I gain the thing I seek? A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy. Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week? Or sells eternity to get a toy?"

"Love thrives not in the heart that shadows dreadeth."

"Into the chamber wickedly he stalks And gazeth on her yet unstainèd bed."

"Her lily hand her rosy cheek lies under, Cozening the pillow of a lawful kiss; Who, therefore angry, seems to part in sunder, Swelling on either side to want his bliss; Between whose hills her head entombed is; Where like a virtuous monument she lies, To be admired of lewd unhallowed eyes."

"Pure Chastity is rifled of her store, And Lust, the thief, far poorer than before."

"And my true eyes have never practis’d how To cloak offences with a cunning brow."

"Why should the worm intrude the maiden bud? Or hateful cuckoos hatch in sparrows’ nests? Or toads infect fair founts with venom mud? Or tyrant folly lurk in gentle breasts? Or kings be breakers of their own behests? But no perfection is so absolute, That some impurity doth not pollute."

"O Opportunity! thy guilt is great, ’Tis thou that execut’st the traitor’s treason; Thou sett’st the wolf where he the lamb may get; Whoever plots the sin, thou point’st the season; ’Tis thou that spurn’st at right, at law, at reason; And in thy shady cell, where none may spy him, Sits Sin to seize the souls that wander by him.Thou mak’st the vestal violate her oath; Thou blow’st the fire when temperance is thaw’d; Thou smother’st honesty, thou murder’st troth; Thou foul abettor! thou notorious bawd! Thou plantest scandal and displacest laud: Thou ravisher, thou traitor, thou false thief, Thy honey turns to gall, thy joy to grief!Thy secret pleasure turns to open shame, Thy private feasting to a public fast, Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name, Thy sugar’d tongue to bitter wormwood taste: Thy violent vanities can never last. How comes it, then, vile Opportunity, Being so bad, such numbers seek for thee?When wilt thou be the humble suppliant’s friend, And bring him where his suit may be obtain’d? When wilt thou sort an hour great strifes to end? Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chain’d? Give physic to the sick, ease to the pain’d? The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee; But they ne’er meet with Opportunity.The patient dies while the physician sleeps; The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds; Justice is feasting while the widow weeps; Advice is sporting while infection breeds: Thou grant’st no time for charitable deeds: Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder’s rages, Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages.When Truth and Virtue have to do with thee, A thousand crosses keep them from thy aid: They buy thy help; but Sin ne’er gives a fee, He gratis comes; and thou art well appaid As well to hear as grant what he hath said."

"Time’s glory is to calm contending kings, To unmask falsehood and bring truth to light, To stamp the seal of time in aged things, To wake the morn and sentinel the night, To wrong the wronger till he render right, To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours, And smear with dust their glittering golden towers;To fill with worm-holes stately monuments, To feed oblivion with decay of things, To blot old books and alter their contents, To pluck the quills from ancient ravens’ wings, To dry the old oak’s sap and cherish springs, To spoil antiquities of hammer’d steel, And turn the giddy round of Fortune’s wheel;To show the beldam daughters of her daughter, To make the child a man, the man a child, To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter, To tame the unicorn and lion wild, To mock the subtle, in themselves beguil’d, To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops, And waste huge stones with little water-drops."

"Sometime her grief is dumb and hath no words; Sometime ’tis mad and too much talk affords."

"No man inveigh against the wither’d flower, But chide rough winter that the flower hath kill’d."

"And that deep torture may be called a hell, When more is felt than one hath power to tell."

"Cloud-kissing Ilion."

"His beard, all silver white, Wagg'd up and down."

"Why should the private pleasure of some one Become the public plague of many moe? Let sin, alone committed, light alone Upon his head that hath transgressèd so; Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe; For one’s offence why should so many fall, To plague a private sin in general?"

"The two poems of Venus and Adonis and of Tarquin and Lucrece appear to us like a couple of ice-houses. They are about as hard, as glittering, and as cold. The author seems all the time to be thinking of his verses, and not of his subject,—not of what his characters would feel, but of what he shall say; and as it must happen in all such cases, he always puts into their mouths those things which they would be the last to think of, and which it shows the greatest ingenuity in him to find out. The whole is laboured, up-hill work. The poet is perpetually singling out the difficulties of the art to make an exhibition of his strength and skill in wrestling with them. He is making perpetual trials of them as if his mastery over them were doubted. The images, which are often striking, are generally applied to things which they are the least like: so that they do not blend with the poem, but seem stuck upon it, like splendid patchwork, or remain quite distinct from it, like detached substances, painted and varnished over. A beautiful thought is sure to be lost in an endless commentary upon it. The speakers are like persons who have both leisure and inclination to make riddles on their own situation, and to twist and turn every object or incident into acrostics and anagrams. Everything is spun out into allegory; and a digression is always preferred to the main story. Sentiment is built up upon plays of words; the hero or heroine feels, not from the impulse of passion, but from the force of dialectics. There is besides, a strange attempt to substitute the language of painting for that of poetry, to make us see their feelings in the faces of the persons; and again, consistently with this, in the description of the picture in Tarquin and Lucrece, those circumstances are chiefly insisted on, which it would be impossible to convey except by words. The invocation to Opportunity in the Tarquin and Lucrece is full of thoughts and images, but at the same time it is overloaded by them."

"THE RAGING ROCKS AND SHIVERING SHOCKS SHALL BREAK THE LOCKS OF PRISON GATES!! And Phoebus' car shall shine from far and make and mar… THE FOOLISH FIGHTS."

"But stay, O spite! But mark, poor knight! What dreadful dole is here! Eyes, do you see? How can it be? O fainting fox! O dear! Thy mantle good, What, stained with blood? Approach, ye Furies fell! O Fates, come, come, Cut thread and thrum. I’ll crush, conclude, OR QUELL."