William Shakespeare

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

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

"Off with his head!"

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

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

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

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

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

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"We have seen better days."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

"Is she not passing fair?"

"I was in love with my bed."

"What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!"

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

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

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

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

"Nothing can come of nothing."

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

"Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends."

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

"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."

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

"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?"

"What light through yonder window breaks?"

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

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