Quotes from William Shakespeare

From lowest place when virtuous things proceed, The place is dignified by the doer's deed: Where great additions swell's, and virtue none, It is a dropsied honour. Good alone Is good without a name. Vileness is so: The property by what it is should go, Not by the title.

A good lenten answer! I can tell thee where that saying was born, of 'I fear no colours.

All friends shall taste The wages of their virtue, and all foes The cup of their deserving

a raven's heart within a dove.

You'll rue the time That clogs me with this answer.

And oftentimes excusing of a fault Doth make the fault the worse by the excuse, As patches set upon a little breach Discredit more in hiding of the fault Than did the fault before it was so patch'd.

There 's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 't is not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is 't to leave betimes? Hamlet. V.2

What's the matter, you dissentious rogues, That rubbing the poor itch of your opinion Make yourselves scabs?

we must obey the time.

Why should the private pleasure of some one Become the public plague of many moe? Let sin, alone committed, light alone Upon his head that hath transgressed so; Let guiltless souls be freed from guilty woe: For one's offence why should so many fall, To plague a private sin in general?

Rouse him:—make after him, poison his delight, Proclaim him in the streets; incense her kinsmen, And, though he in a fertile climate dwell, Plague him with flies: though that his joy be joy, Yet throw such changes of vexation

Let me hear you speak farther. I have spirit to do anything that appears not foul in the truth of my spirit.

Such stuff as madmen tongue.

Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living.

My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd; And I myself see not the bottom of it.

If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last, When other petty griefs have done their spite, But in the onset come: so shall I taste At first the very worst of fortune's might; And other strains of woe, which now seem woe, Compar'd with loss of thee will not seem so.

But Montague is bound as well as I, In penalty alike; and 'tis not hard, I think, For men so old as we to keep the peace.

twould almost damn those ears; The author's meaning is this:—That some people are thought wise whilst they keep silence; who, when they open their mouths, are such stupid praters, that the hearers cannot help calling them fools, and so incur the judgment denounced in the Gospel.—THEOBALD.

But by bad courses may be understood that their events can never fall out good.

How true a twain Seemeth this concordant one! Love hath reason, Reason none, If what parts, can so remain.

London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the

The raven chides blackness.

Love is your master, for he masters you; And he that is so yoked by a fool, Methinks, should not be chronicled for wise.

I had as lief have the foppery of freedom as the morality of imprisonment.