Famous Lines from the Plays and Sonnets by Shakespeare
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
–Hamlet
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
-Hamlet
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date”.
Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
-Hamlet
When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!
-Hamlet
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and, by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub.
For in this sleep of death what dreams may come….
-Hamlet
Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.
-Hamlet
Sweets to the sweet.
-Hamlet
God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another.
-Hamlet
Conscience doth make cowards of us all.
-Hamlet
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
-Hamlet
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
-Hamlet
This above all: to think own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
-Hamlet
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
-Henry V
Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.
–Romeo and Juliet
Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.
-Romeo and Juliet
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
-Macbeth
Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak.
-As You Like It
I do love nothing in the world so well as you – is not that strange?
-Much Ado About Nothing
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
-A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,-
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.
-Much Ado About Nothing
Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.
-Much Ado About Nothing
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exists and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
-As You Like It
The course of true love never did run smooth.
-A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
-Julius Caesar
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
-Julius Caesar
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
Et tu, Brute?
-Julius Caesar
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey’d monster, which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.
-Othello
All that glisters is not gold;
Often have you heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold:
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
-The Merchant of Venice
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
-The Merchant of Venice
Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
-Romeo and Juliet
Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.
-The Merry Wives of Windsor
Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.
-Romeo and Juliet
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
-Romeo and Juliet
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
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.
-Macbeth
What’s done cannot be undone.
-Macbeth
Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!
-Macbeth
Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
-Macbeth
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
-As You Like It
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
-The Tempest
Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them
-Twelfth Night
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
-All’s Well That Ends Well
If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
-Twelfth Night
The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
-King Henry VI, Part Two
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
-The Tempest
What’s past is prologue.
-The Tempest
Me, poor man, my library
Was dukedom large enough.
-The Tempest
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises.
-All’s Well That Ends Well
*Learn more about William Shakespeare
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Link will appear as Hanson, Marilee. "Shakespeare Quotes" https://englishhistory.net/shakespeare/quotes/, April 19, 2015