All Quotes

"No one goes away and then comes back."

"'Tis an ill wind that blows no man to profit."

"Virtue is the shoeing-horn of justice."

"There are a kind of men so loose of soul, That in their sleeps will mutter their affairs."

"'Tis not a year or two shows us a man: They are all but stomachs, and we all but food; They eat us hungerly, and when they are full, They belch us."

"Do it not with poison, strangle her in her bed."

"Who would not make her husband a cuckold to make him a monarch?"

"Heaven me such uses send, Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend."

"O damn'd Iago! O inhuman dog!"

"Put out the light, and then put out the light."

"[He kisses her] O balmy breath, that dost almost persuade Justice to break her sword. One more, one more! Be thus when thou art dead, and I will kill thee, And love thee after. One more, and that's the last! So sweet was ne'er so fatal. I must weep, But they are cruel tears. This sorrow's heavenly; It strikes where it doth love. She wakes."

"What noise is this? Not dead — not yet quite dead? I that am cruel am yet merciful; I would not have the linger in thy pain So, so."

"It is the very error of the moon; She comes more near the earth than she was wont; And makes men mad."

"I hold my peace, sir? no; No, I will speak as liberal as the north; Let heaven and men and devils, let them all, All, all, cry shame against me, yet I'll speak."

"Demand me nothing: what you know, you know: From this time forth I never will speak word."

"I pray you, in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice: then, must you speak Of one that lov'd not wisely but too well; Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought, Perplex'd in the extreme; of one whose hand, Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away Richer than all his tribe; of one whose subdu'd eyes Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their med'cinable gum. Set you down this; And say besides, that in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk Beat a Venetian and traduc'd the state, I took by the throat the circumcised dog, And smote him thus."

"I kissed thee ere I killed thee, no way but this, Killing myself, to die upon a kiss."

"O Spartan dog, More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea."

"Shakespeare and Verdi whisper the answer: look for the Iagos. They do not wield the knife. They do not pull the trigger. But they create the mental machinery by which violence feels righteous."

"Nothing can come of nothing: speak again."

"Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave My heart into my mouth: I love your majesty According to my bond; no more nor less."

"Mend your speech a little, Lest you may mar your fortunes."

"Lear: So young, and so untender? Cordelia: So young, my lord, and true. Lear: Let it be so; — thy truth, then, be thy dower."

"Come not between the dragon and his wrath."

"Lear: The bow is bent and drawn; make from the shaft. Kent: Let it fall rather, though the fork invade The region of my heart"

"Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow Upon the foul disease."

"Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides: Who cover faults, at last shame them derides."

"Tis the infirmity of his age: yet he hath ever but slenderly known himself."

"What poor astronomers are they, Take women’s eyes for stars!"

"Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take More composition and fierce quality Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed, Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops Got 'tween asleep and wake?"

"Now, gods, stand up for bastards!"

"We have seen the best of our time: machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves."

"This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of whore-master man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star!"

"Truth's a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped out, when Lady the brach may stand by the fire and stink."

"Have more than thou showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest, Ride more than thou goest, Learn more than thou trowest, Set less than thou throwest; Leave thy drink and thy whore, And keep in-a-door, And thou shall have more Than two tens to a score."

"The hedge sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, That it had it head bit off by it young."

"Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, More hideous, when thou show'st thee in a child Than the sea-monster!"

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

"Striving to better, oft we mar what's well."

"Oswald: Why dost thou use me thus? I know thee not. Kent: Fellow, I know thee. Oswald: What dost thou know me for? Kent: A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking whoreson, glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition."

"I have seen better faces in my time, Than stands on any shoulder that I see Before me at this instant."

"This is some fellow, Who, having been praised for bluntness, doth affect A saucy roughness, and constrains the garb Quite from his nature: He cannot flatter, he! An honest mind and plain, he must speak truth: An they will take it, so; if not, he's plain. These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness Harbor more craft and more corrupter ends Than twenty silly-ducking observants That stretch their duties nicely."

"Fortune, good-night: smile once more; turn thy wheel!"

"That sir which serves and seeks for gain, And follows but for form, Will pack when it begins to rain, And leave thee in the storm. But I will tarry; the fool will stay, And let the wise man fly: The knave turns fool that runs away; The fool, no knave, perdy."

"O, sir, you are old; Nature in you stands on the very verge Of her confine: you should be rul'd and led By some discretion, that discerns your state Better than you yourself."

"Our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous: Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life is cheap as beast's."

"You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, As full of grief as age; wretched in both! If it be you that stir these daughters' hearts Against their father, fool me not so much To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger, And let not women's weapons, water-drops, Stain my man's cheeks!"

"I will do such things, What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be The terrors of the earth."

"I have full cause of weeping; but this heart Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws Or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!"

"Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Strike flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's molds, all germens spill at once That make ingrateful man!"