William Shakespeare quotes
William Shakespeare (1564–1616): English playwright and poet. The library holds 2748 quotes by William Shakespeare, drawn from Hamlet, Henry, Macbeth and other works. The 60 below are the most quoted; search the library in the maker for the rest.
Often about: life, nature, love, time, faith, grief
The best-known William Shakespeare quotes
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Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt.
Measure for Measure, Act I Scene 4 -
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
The Merchant of Venice, Act V Scene 1 -
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.
Twelfth Night, Act II Scene 5 -
We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
The Tempest, Act IV Scene 1 -
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I Scene 1 -
The course of true love never did run smooth.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act I Scene 1 -
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and godlike reason To fust in us unused.
Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. 4 -
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.
Hamlet, Act I Scene 3 -
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is To have a thankless child!
King Lear, Act i. Sc. 4 -
We must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.
Julius Caesar, Act iv. Sc. 3 -
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 3 -
Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.
Twelfth Night, Act I Scene 5 -
There is a tide in the affairs of men Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
Julius Caesar, Act iv. Sc. 3 -
Pity is the virtue of the law, And none but tyrants use it cruelly.
Timon of Athens, Act iii. Sc. 5 -
As in a theatre, the eyes of men, After a well-graced actor leaves the stage, Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious.
Pericles, Act v. Sc. 2 -
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee Where thrift may follow fawning.
Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 2 -
Her voice was ever soft, Gentle, and low—an excellent thing in woman.
King Lear, v. 3 -
Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues We write in water.
Henry VIII, Act iv. Sc. 2 -
He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.
Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 2 -
His life was gentle, and the elements So mix’d in him, that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, “This was a man!”
Julius Caesar, Act v. Sc. 5 -
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings; Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.
Richard III, Act v. Sc. 2 -
You have too much respect upon the world: They lose it that do buy it with much care.
The Merchant of Venice, Act i. Sc. 1 -
Why, then the world’s mine oyster, Which I with sword will open.
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act ii. Sc. 2 -
But I am constant as the northern star, Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality There is no fellow in the firmament.
Julius Caesar, Act iii. Sc. 1 -
But yesterday the word of Caesar might Have stood against the world; now lies he there, And none so poor to do him reverence.
Julius Caesar, Act iii. Sc. 2 -
When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.
Julius Caesar, Act ii. Sc. 2 -
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s In deepest consequence.
Macbeth, Act i. Sc. 3 -
A gentleman, nurse, that loves to hear himself talk, and will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in a month.
Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Sc. 4 -
Now, good digestion wait on appetite, And health on both!
Macbeth, Act iii. Sc. 4 -
Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.
Henry V, Act ii. Sc. 4 -
’Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world.
Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 2 -
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!
Hamlet, ii. 2 -
One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, So fast they follow.
Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. 7 -
To be honest as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
Hamlet, Act ii. Sc. 2 -
Silence is the perfectest herald of joy: I were but little happy, if I could say how much.
Much Ado About Nothing, Act ii. Sc. 1 -
They are as sick that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing.
The Merchant of Venice, Act i. Sc. 2 -
And do as adversaries do in law,—Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.
The Taming of the Shrew, Act i. Sc. 2 -
The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.
Much Ado About Nothing, Act iii. Sc. 3 -
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Hamlet, Act ii. Sc. 2 -
I would applaud thee to the very echo, That should applaud again.
Macbeth, Act v. Sc. 3 -
All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
Macbeth, Act v. Sc. 1 -
What’s gone and what’s past help Should be past grief.
The Winter’s Tale, Act iii. Sc.2 -
The robb’d that smiles, steals something from the thief.
Othello, Act i. Sc. 3 -
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
Henry IV, Part 1, Part I. Act ii. Sc. 3 -
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy: For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 3 -
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
King John, Act iv. Sc. 2 -
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 4 -
A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
Richard III, Act v. Sc. 4 -
Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye, And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.
Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Sc. 3 -
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
King John, Act iii. Sc. 4 -
The sense of death is most in apprehension; And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.
Measure for Measure, Act iii. Sc. 1 -
The flighty purpose never is o’ertook, Unless the deed go with it.
Macbeth, Act iv. Sc. 1 -
Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops.
Romeo and Juliet, Act iii. Sc. 5 -
Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.
Troilus and Cressida, Act iii. Sc. 1 -
Happy are they that hear their detractions, And can put them to mending.
Much Ado About Nothing, Act ii., Sc. 3 -
O father, what a hell of witchcraft lies In the small orb of one particular tear.
A Lover’s Complaint, Line 288 -
For my means, I’ll husband them so well, They shall go far with little.
Hamlet, Act iv., Sc. 5 -
When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul Lends the tongue vows.
Hamlet, Act i. Sc. 3 -
The purest treasure mortal times afford Is spotless reputation; that away, Men are but gilded loam or painted clay.
Pericles, Act ii. Sc. 1 -
I cannot but remember such things were, That were most precious to me.
Macbeth, Act iv. Sc. 3
Where these quotes come from
- Hamlet (352 quotes)
- Henry (311 quotes)
- Macbeth (184 quotes)
- The Merchant of Venice (144 quotes)
- As You Like It (128 quotes)
- Julius Caesar (126 quotes)
- Romeo and Juliet (124 quotes)
- Othello (123 quotes)
Every quote comes from a public-domain edition. How the library was made .