Quotes from William Shakespeare

Who is it that says most? which can say moreThan this rich praise,—that you alone are you?

Bait the hook well: this fish will bite.

He was a manOf an unbounded stomach.

And the imperial votaress passed on,In maiden meditation, fancy-free.Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:It fell upon a little western flower,Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,And maidens call it, Love-in-idleness.

This is Ercles' vein, a tyrant's vein.

Steep'd me in poverty to the very lips.

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,Thou com'st in such a questionable shapeThat I will speak to thee.

Since once I sat upon a promontory,And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's backUttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,That the rude sea grew civil at her song,And certain stars shot madly from their spheresTo hear the sea-maid's music.

Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide archOf the rang'd empire fall! Here is my space.Kingdoms are clay.

And to be kingStands not within the prospect of belief.

I want that glib and oily artTo speak and purpose not.

Put out the light, and then put out the light:If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,I can again thy former light restore,Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,I know not where is that Promethean heatThat can thy light relume.

Over hill, over dale,Thorough bush, thorough brier,Over park, over pale,Thorough flood, thorough fire.

Refrain tonight;And that shall lend a kind of easinessTo the next abstinence: the next more easy;For use almost can change the stamp of nature.

Oppress'd with two weak evils, age and hunger.

A rhapsody of words.

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?Sweets with sweet war not, joy delights in joy.

All his faults observ'd,Set in a notebook, learn'd, and conn'd by rote.

Nature in you stands on the very vergeOf her confine.

Banners flout the sky.

Nature hath fram'd strange fellows in her time.

'Tis strange that death should sing.I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death.

He makes a July's day short as December.