Fellowship in woe doth woe assuage.
¶ "The Rape of Lucrece" (l. 790)
Quotations by ...
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Jesters do often prove prophets.
¶ (Attributed)
Frame thy mind to mirth and merriment, which bars a thousand harms, and lengthens life.
¶ (Attributed)
In nature there is no blemish but the mind: none can be called deformed but the unkind.
¶ (Attributed)
'Tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.
¶ (Attributed)
Grief makes one hour ten.
¶ (Attributed)
Thou call'dst me a dog before thou hadst a cause, but, since I am a dog, beware my fangs.
¶ (Attributed)
Lovers and madmen have seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
¶ A Midsummer Night's Dream, V.I.4
Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living.
¶ All's Well That Ends Well, I.I.59
The web of our life is a mingled yarn, good and ill together.
¶ All's Well that Ends Well, IV.iii.74
We, ignorant of ourselves,
Beg often our own harms, which the wise powers
Deny us for our good; so we find profit by losing of our prayers.
¶ Antony and Cleopatra, II.I.5
To business that we love we rise betime
And go to it with delight.
¶ Antony and Cleopatra, IV.iv.20
O, how full of briers is this working-day world!
¶ As You Like It, I.iii.11
Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:
The wide and universal theater
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in.
¶ As You Like It, II.vii.136
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women in it merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.
¶ As You Like It, II.vii.139
Kindness, nobler ever than revenge.
¶ As You Like It, IV.iii.129
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
¶ As You Like It, V.i.31-32
Ingratitude is monstrous.
¶ Coriolanus, II.iii.9
You might have been enough the man you are
With striving less to be so.
¶ Coriolanus, III.ii.19-20
You might have been enough the man you are
With striving less to be so.
¶ Coriolanus, III.ii.19-20
Action is eloquence.
¶ Coriolanus, III.ii.76
Society is not comfort
To one not sociable.
¶ Cymbeline, IV.ii.12
Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.
¶ Cymbeline, IV.iii.46
The miserable have no other medicine
But only hope.
¶ Hamlet
Many wearing rapiers are afraid of goosequills.
¶ Hamlet
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 I.iii.78-80 [Polonius] (c.1600)
Season your admiration for a while.
¶ Hamlet, I.I.192
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.
¶ Hamlet, I.iii.62-63
Meet it as I should set it down
That one may smile and smile and still be a villain.
¶ Hamlet, I.v.106-7
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.
¶ Hamlet, II.ii.207
We know what we are, but we know not what we may be.
¶ Hamlet, IV.v.43
There is a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.
¶ Hamlet, V.ii.10-11
If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work.
¶ Henry IV, Part 1, I.ii.208
Wisdom cries out in the streets, and no man regards it.
¶ Henry IV, Part 1, I.ii.88-89
Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!
¶ Henry IV, Part 1, V.iv.145-6
Past and to come seems best; things present, worst.
¶ Henry IV, Part 2, I.iii.108
Are these things then necessities Then let us meet them like necessities.
¶ Henry IV, Part 2, III.i.92-93
Ignorance is the curse of God.
¶ Henry IV, Part 2, IV.vii.75
GLENDOWER: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
HOTSPUR: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?
¶ Henry IV, Part I, III.i.53-55
Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin
As self-neglecting.
¶ Henry V
The strawberry grows underneath the nettle.
¶ Henry V, I.I.60
There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out.
¶ Henry V, IV.I.4
There is occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things.
¶ Henry V, V.i.3
Now 'tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted;
Suffer them now, and they'll o'ergrow the garden.
¶ Henry VI, Part 2, III.i.31
Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.
¶ Henry VI, Part 3, II.v.55
Now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts.
¶ Henry VI, Part 3, IV.vi.39
Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot
That it do singe yourself.
¶ Henry VIII, I.I.140
'Tis a kind of good deed to say well,
Yet words are not deeds.
¶ Henry VIII, III.ii.153-154
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
¶ Julius Caesar
O, that a man might know
The end of this day's business ere it come!
¶ Julius Caesar, V.I.122
Courage mounteth with occasion.
¶ King John, II.i.82
And oftentimes excusing of a fault,
Doth make the fault worse by the excuse.
¶ King John, IV.ii.28-31
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune -- often the surfeit of our own behavior -- we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the star: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and trechers 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 .…
¶ King Lear
An admirable evasion of whoremaster man: To hang his goatish disposition to the charge of a star.
¶ King Lear, I.ii
Striving to better, oft we mar what's well.
¶ King Lear, I.iv.353
Wisdom and goodness to the vile seem vile.
¶ King Lear, IV.ii.38
Through tattered clothes small vices do appear;
Robes and furred gowns hide all.
¶ King Lear, IV.vi.166
Ripeness is all.
¶ King Lear, V.ii.11
Men are as the time is.
¶ King Lear, V.iii.31
Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.
¶ Macbeth