William Shakespeare quotes

Frailty, thy name is woman!

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice

Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend

This above all: to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

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

Brevity is the soul of wit

Words, words, words.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.

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

What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties

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

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all

The lady protests too much, methinks.

I must be cruel, only to be kind

When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions.

Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.

The readiness is all.

The rest is silence.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair

Look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under’t.

Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble.

Something wicked this way comes.

Out, damned spot! out, I say!

What’s done cannot be undone.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time

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.

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

Parting is such sweet sorrow
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.

These violent delights have violent ends

A plague o’ both your houses.

Sweet are the uses of adversity

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.

Beware the Ides of March.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

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

Et tu, Brute?—Then fall, Caesar!

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears

The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit

All that glisters is not gold

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 quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath.

The course of true love never did run smooth.

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

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

And though she be but little, she is fierce.

If music be the food of love, play on

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

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

Nothing will 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.

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport.

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

Who steals my purse steals trash.

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey’d monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.

Hell is empty,
And all the devils are here.

What’s past is prologue

Misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows.

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

O brave new world
That has such people in ’t!

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York

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

The better part of valour is discretion

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

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

Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall

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

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin

Why then, the world’s mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate

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, love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds