Quotes
Following is a list of some of Shakespeare's most famous quotes, organized by subject headings. Each entry has a quote followed by the name of the play, then the act, scene, and line from which it comes. Also included in parenthesis is the name of the speaker of the quote.
Achievement & Action
- Let my deeds be witness of my worth.
Titus Andronicus, V.I.103 (Aaron)
- What I will, I will, and there an end.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, I.III.65 (Antonio)
- Between the acting of a dreadful thing
Julius Caesar, II.I.63 (Brutus)
- Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.
Hamlet, III.II.17 (Hamlet)
- Your actions are my dreams.
The Winter's Tale, III.II.82 (Leontes)
- Talkers are no good doers. Be assur'd;
We got to use our hands, and not our tongues.
Richard III, I.III.350 (Murderers)
- Words pay no debts, give her deeds.
Troilus and Cressida, III.II.55 (Pandarus)
Acting and Actors
- 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.
Hamlet, II.II.524 (Hamlet)
- Come, cousin, canst thou quake and change thy color,
Murder thy breath in middle of a word,
And then again begin, and stop again,
As if thou were distraught and mad with terror?
Richard III, III.V.1 (Duke of Gloucester)
- And if the boy have not a woman's gift
To rain a shower of commanded tears,
An onion will do well for such a shift,
Which in a napkin (being close convey'd)
Shall in despite enforce a watery eye.
The Taming of the Shrew, IND.I.124 (Lord)
Advice
- Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none. Be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key.
All's Well That Ends Well, I.I.64 (Countess of Rossillion)
- Obey thy parents, keep thy word's justice,
swear not, commit not with man's sworn spouse,
set not thy sweet heart on proud array.
King Lear, III.IV.80 (Edgar)
- Live a little, comfort a little, cheer thyself a little.
As You Like It, II.VI.5 (Orlando)
- It is a good divine that follows his own instructions;
I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done,
than to be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching.
The Merchant of Venice, I.II.12 (Portia)
Beauty
Since that my beauty cannot please his eye,
I'll weep what's left away, and weeping die.
The Comedy of Errors, II.I.114 (Adriana)
Where is any author in the world
Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?
Love's Labor's Lost, IV.III.308 (Berowne)
Your beauty, that did haunt me in my sleep
To undertake the death of all the world,
So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom.
Richard III, I.II.124 (Duke of Gloucester)
O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
As a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear-
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.
Romeo and Juliet, I.V.44 (Romeo)
Confusion
Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?
Sleeping or waking, mad or well-advis'd?
The Comedy of Errors, II.II.212 (Antipholus of Syracuse)
My thoughts are whirled like a potter's wheel,
I know not where I am, nor what I do.
I Henry VI, I.V.19 (Lord Talbot)
Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!
Macbeth, II.III.66 (Macduff)
Crime
Crimes, like lands,
Are not inherited.
Timon of Athens, V.IV.37 (Senator)
If by this crime he owes the law his life,
Why let the war receive't in valiant gore,
For law is strict, and war is nothing more.
Timon of Athens, III.V.82, (Alcibiades)
Foul deeds will rise,
Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.
Hamlet, I.II.256 (Hamlet)
They say best men are molded out of faults,
And for the most, become much more the better
For being a little bad.
Measure for Measure, V.I.439 (Mariana)
Men's faults do seldom to themselves appear,
Their own transgressions partially they smother.
The Rape of Lucrece, 632
You gods will give us
Some faults to make us men.
Antony and Cleopatra, V.I.32 (Agrippa)
Fear
I rather tell thee what is to be fear'd
Than what I fear.
Julius Caesar, I.II.211 (Caesar)
Truly, the hearts of men are full of fear.
You cannot reason (almost) with a man
That looks not heavily and full of dread.
Richard III, II.III.39 (Citizen)
I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins,
That almost freezes up the heat of life.
Romeo and Juliet, IV.III.15 (Juliet)
Inheritance
For in the book of Numbers is it writ,
When the man dies, let the inheritance
Descend unto the daughter.
Henry V, I.II.98 (Canterbury)
Let's choose executors and talks of wills;
And yet not so, for waht can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Richard II, III.II.148 (King Richard)
The old bees die, the young possess their hive.
The Rape of Lucrece, 1769
Innocence
For thou hast kill'd the sweetest innocent
That e'er did lift up eye.
Othello, V.II.199 (Emilia)
The trust I have is in mine innocence,
And therefore am I bold and resolute.
2 Henry VI, IV.IV.59 (Lord Say)
Though my gross blood be stain'd with this abuse,
Immaculate and spotless is my mind.
The Rape of Lucrece, 1655
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
2 Henry VI, IV.II.76 (Dick the Butcher)
Good counselors lack no clients.
Measure for Measure, I.II.106 (Pompey)
Do as adversaries do in law,
Strive mightily, but eat and drink as friends.
The Taming of the Shrew, I.II.276 (Tranio)
The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.
Measure for Measure, II.II.90 (Angelo)
We are for law, he dies, urge it no more
On height of our displeasure. Friend, or brother,
He forfeits his own blood that spills another.
Timon of Athens, III.V.85 (Senator)
In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt
But, being season'd with a gracious voice,
Obscures the show of evil?
The Merchant of Venice, III.II.75 (Bassanio)
We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch and not their terror.
Measure for Measure, II.I.1 (Angelo)
Love
- They do not love that do not show their love.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, I.II.31 (Julia)
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.
Sonnet 116, 1-4
Love's reason's without reason.
Cymbeline, IV.II.22 (Arviragus)
By heaven, my soul is purg'd from grudging hate,
And with my hand I seal my true heart's love.
Richard III, II.I.9 (Earl of Warwick)
Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.
Twelfth Night, III.I.156 (Olivia)
Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.
Sonnet 154, 14
I am sure my love's
More ponderous than my tongue.
King Lear, I.I.77 (Cordelia)
Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine,
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves.
Hamlet, IV.V.162 (Laertes)
O me! what eyes hath Love put in my head,
Which have no correspondence with true sight.
Sonnet 148, 1-2.
So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground.
Sonnet 75, 1-2
Love is merely a madness, and I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a
whip
as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cur'd is,
that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too.
As You Like It, III.II.400 (Rosalind)
The sight of lovers feedeth those in love.
As You Like It, III.IV.57 (Rosalind)
My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it is to me
That I must love a loathed enemy.
Romeo and Juliet, I.V.138 (Juliet)
Memory
Praising what is lost
Makes the remembrance dear.
All's Well That Ends Well, V.III.19 (King of France)
Let us not burden our rememberance with
A heaviness that's gone.
The Tempest, V.I.198 (Prospero)
The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show,
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory.
Sonnett 77, 5-6
Music
Give me some music; music, moody food
Of us that trade in love.
Antony and Cleopatra, II.V.1 (Cleopatra)
For notes of sorrow out of tune are worse
Than priests and fanes that lie.
Cymbeline, IV.II.241 (Guiderius)
If music be the food of love, play on...
Twelfth Night, I.I.1 (Orsina)
Nobility
Signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine
On all deservers.
Macbeth, I.IV.41 (Duncan)
True nobility is exempt from fear:
More can I bear than you dare execute.
2 Henry VI, IV.I.130 (Earl of Suffolk)
Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge.
Titus Andronicus, I.I.119 (Tamora)
Prayer
O, upon my knee
Made hard with kneeling, I do pray to thee.
King John, III.I.309 (Constance)
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
Hamlet, III.III.97 (Claudius)
But yet like prayers divine,
I must each day say o'er the very same,
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine,
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name.
Sonnet 108, 5-8
Quarrels (& Arguments)
And the best quarrels, in the heat, are curs'd
By those that feel their sharpness.
King Lear, V.III.56 (Edmund)
In a false quarrel there is no true valor.
Much Ado About Nothing, V.I.120 (Benedick)
In the managing of quarrels you may say he is wise,
for either he avoids them with great discretion,
or undertakes them with a most Christian-like fear.
Much Ado About Nothing, II.III.189 (Don Pedro)
Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
Hamlet, I.III.65 (Polonius)
Revenge
Can vengeance be pursued further than death?
Romeo and Juliet, V.III.55 (Paris)
I am burn'd up with inflaming wrath,
A rage whose heat hath this condition,
That nothing can allay, nothing but blood.
King John, III.I.340 (King John)
My ashes, as the phoenix, may bring forth
A bird that will revenge upon you all.
3 Henry VI, I.IV.35 (Duke of York)
Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,
Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.
Titus Andronicus, II.III.38 (Aaron)
Smiles
Some that smile in their hearts, I fear,
Millions of mischiefs.
Julius Caesar, IV.I.50 (Caesar)
A smile recures the wounding of a frown.
Venus and Adonis, 465
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.
Henry VIII, II.II.368 (Cardinal Wolsey)
Theater
If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it
as an improbable fiction.
Twelfth Night, III.IV.127 (Fabian)
They thought it good you hear a play,
And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,
Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.
The Taming of the Shrew, Ind.II.134 (Messenger)
There is no vice so simple but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.
The Merchant of Venice, III.II.76
Who has a book of all that monarchs do,
He's more secure to keep it shut than shown,
For vice repeated is like the wand'ring wind,
Blows dust in other's eyes, to spread itself.
Pericles, I.I.94 (Pericles)
The world's a huge thing; it is a great price
For a small vice.
Othello, IV.III.69 (Emilia)
War
Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war.
Julius Caesar, III.I.273 (Antony)
We go to gain a little parch of ground
That hath in it no profit but the name.
Hamlet, IV.IV.18 (Captain)
A victory is twice itself when the achiever brings home full numbers.
Much Ado About Nothing, I.I.8 (Leonato)
Youth
Rouse up thy youthful blood, be valiant and live.
Richard II, I.III.83, John of Gaunt
O foolish youth,
Thou seek'st the greatness that will overwhelm thee.
2 Henry IV, IV.V.96 (King Henry IV)
A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.
Much Ado About Nothing, II.III.238 (Benedick)
Deal mildly with his youth,
for young hot colts being rag'd do rage the more.
Richard II, II.I.69 (Duke of York)