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William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the (Bard of Avon).
His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
You'll be surprised by some of the phrases in the top 130 William Shakespeare quotes that you didn't even know were written by him, and you'll be reminded of some of his best ones.
Famous quotes and sayings by William Shakespeare
The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
― William Shakespeare
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
― William Shakespeare
These violent delights have violent ends.
― William Shakespeare
It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.
― William Shakespeare
We know what we are, but not what we may be.
― William Shakespeare
Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
― William Shakespeare
God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another.
― William Shakespeare
Listen to many, speak to a few.
― William Shakespeare
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.
― William Shakespeare
Conscience doth make cowards of us all.
― William Shakespeare
My soul is in the sky.
― William Shakespeare
So wise so young, they say, do never live long.
― William Shakespeare
If we are true to ourselves, we can not be false to anyone.
― William Shakespeare
Be great in act, as you have been in thought.
― William Shakespeare
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
― William Shakespeare
Shakespeare Quotes on Love
Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
― William Shakespeare
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
― William Shakespeare
The course of true love never did run smooth.
― William Shakespeare
Don't waste your love on somebody, who doesn't value it.
― William Shakespeare
If love be rough with you, be rough with love. Prick love for pricking and you beat love down.
― William Shakespeare
Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
― William Shakespeare
Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.
― William Shakespeare
If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it; that surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die.
― William Shakespeare
thus with a kiss I die.
― William Shakespeare
A young woman in love always looks like patience on a monument smiling at grief.
― William Shakespeare
I would not wish any companion in the world but you.
― William Shakespeare
I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.
― William Shakespeare
In black ink my love may still shine bright.
― William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
― William Shakespeare
Love is too young to know what conscience is.
― William Shakespeare
I am one who loved not wisely but too well.
― William Shakespeare
Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love.
― William Shakespeare
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.
― William Shakespeare
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.
― William Shakespeare
Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is! (Act 1, scene 1)
― William Shakespeare
My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.
― William Shakespeare
Sweets to the sweet.
― William Shakespeare
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.
― William Shakespeare
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O, that I were a glove upon that hand That I might touch that cheek!
― William Shakespeare
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.
― William Shakespeare
I'll follow thee and make a heaven of hell, To die upon the hand I love so well.
― William Shakespeare
When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.
― William Shakespeare
And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.
― William Shakespeare
I do love nothing in the world so well as you- is not that strange?
― William Shakespeare
For which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?
― William Shakespeare
Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.
― William Shakespeare
For she had eyes and chose me.
― William Shakespeare
For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
― William Shakespeare
O serpent heart hid with a flowering face! Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave? Beautiful tyrant, fiend angelical, dove feather raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of divinest show, just opposite to what thou justly seem'st - A damned saint, an honorable villain!
― William Shakespeare
Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. then your love would also change.
― William Shakespeare
They do not love that do not show their love.
― William Shakespeare
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
― William Shakespeare
Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
― William Shakespeare
...Who could refrain, That had a heart to love, and in that heart Courage to make love known?
― William Shakespeare
I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.
― William Shakespeare
Best William Shakespeare Quotes
Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.
― William Shakespeare
Though she be but little, she is fierce!
― William Shakespeare
Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.
― William Shakespeare
Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!
― William Shakespeare
Life... is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
― William Shakespeare
I am not bound to please thee with my answers.
― William Shakespeare
There's an old saying that applies to me: you can't lose a game if you don't play the game.
― William Shakespeare
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
― William Shakespeare
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
― William Shakespeare
Do you not know I am a woman? when I think, I must speak.
― William Shakespeare
My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.
― William Shakespeare
Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.
― William Shakespeare
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.
― William Shakespeare
To die, to sleep - To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub, For in this sleep of death what dreams may come...
― William Shakespeare
Expectation is the root of all heartache.
― William Shakespeare
Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.
― William Shakespeare
Nothing will come of nothing: speak again.
― William Shakespeare
Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under it.
― William Shakespeare
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.
― William Shakespeare
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
― William Shakespeare
When he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.
― William Shakespeare
Brevity is the soul of wit.
― William Shakespeare
Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
― William Shakespeare
You speak an infinite deal of nothing.
― William Shakespeare
By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.
― William Shakespeare
O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock The meat it feeds on.
― William Shakespeare
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
― William Shakespeare
Words are easy, like the wind; faithful friends are hard to find.
― William Shakespeare
This above all: to thine own self be true.
― William Shakespeare
When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!
― William Shakespeare
I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it.
― William Shakespeare
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever,- One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never.
― William Shakespeare
These violent delights have violent ends And in their triump die, like fire and powder Which, as they kiss, consume.
― William Shakespeare
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
― William Shakespeare
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.
― William Shakespeare
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
― William Shakespeare
Dispute not with her: she is lunatic.
― William Shakespeare
The breaking of so great a thing should make A greater crack: the round world Should have shook lions into civil streets, And citizens to their dens.
― William Shakespeare
One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
― William Shakespeare
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.
― William Shakespeare
Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
― William Shakespeare
What's in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.
― William Shakespeare
Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.
― William Shakespeare
There was a star danced, and under that was I born.
― William Shakespeare
Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.
― William Shakespeare
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.
― William Shakespeare
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.
― William Shakespeare
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
― William Shakespeare
Men in rage strike those that wish them best.
― William Shakespeare
I can see he's not in your good books,' said the messenger. 'No, and if he were I would burn my library.
― William Shakespeare
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
― William Shakespeare
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.
― William Shakespeare
Presume not that I am the thing I was.
― William Shakespeare
I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.
― William Shakespeare
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.
― William Shakespeare
What piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world. The paragon of animals. And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
― William Shakespeare
What's done cannot be undone.
― William Shakespeare
When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.
― William Shakespeare
Words, words, words.
― William Shakespeare
Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.
― William Shakespeare
In time we hate that which we often fear.
― William Shakespeare
What's past is prologue.
― William Shakespeare
Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
― William Shakespeare
Madness in great ones must not unwatched go.
― William Shakespeare
All's well that ends well.
― William Shakespeare
Women may fall when there's no strength in men.
― William Shakespeare
I must be cruel only to be kind; Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.
― William Shakespeare
Go wisely and slowly. Those who rush stumble and fall.
― William Shakespeare
He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man. He that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.
― William Shakespeare
Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after.
― William Shakespeare
A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.
― William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare Romeo & Juliet
Romeo: If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this: My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Juliet: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
Romeo: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
Juliet: Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
Romeo: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
Juliet: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
Romeo: Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
Juliet: Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
Romeo: Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.
Juliet: You kiss by the book.
― William Shakespeare