William Shakespeare quotes & passages

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:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimm’d,And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d:But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

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.

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

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel;But do not dull thy palm with entertainmentOf each new-hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.For he today that sheds his blood with meShall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,This day shall gentle his condition;And gentlemen in England now abedShall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaksThat fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

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.

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.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits andAre 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 stuffAs dreams are made on, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.

For aught that I could ever read,Could ever hear by tale or history,The course of true love never did run smooth.

If music be the food of love, play on,Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,The appetite may sicken and so die.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Take him and cut him out in little stars,And he will make the face of heaven so fineThat all the world will be in love with night,And pay no worship to the garish sun.

Fear no more the heat o’ th’ sun,Nor the furious winter’s rages;Thou thy worldly task hast done,Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.Golden lads and girls all must,As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;Omitted, all the voyage of their lifeIs bound in shallows and in miseries.On such a full sea are we now afloat,And we must take the current when it serves,Or lose our ventures.

Cowards die many times before their deaths;The valiant never taste of death but once.

How far that little candle throws his beams!So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

I can no other answer make but thanks,And thanks, and ever thanks; and oft good turnsAre shuffled off with such uncurrent pay.

Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,I will be brief.

Doubt thou the stars are fire,Doubt that the sun doth move,Doubt truth to be a liar,But never doubt I love.

O mistress mine, where are you roaming?O stay and hear, your true love’s coming,That can sing both high and low.Trip no further, pretty sweeting.Journeys end in lovers meeting,Every wise man’s son doth know.

What’s in a name? That which we call a roseBy any other name would smell as sweet;So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,Retain that dear perfection which he owesWithout that title.

Good night, good night. Parting is such sweet sorrowThat I shall say good night till it be morrow.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Now is the winter of our discontentMade glorious summer by this son of York;And all the clouds that loured upon our houseIn the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I thank you.

I count myself in nothing else so happyAs in a soul rememb’ring my good friends;And as my fortune ripens with thy love,It shall be still thy true love’s recompense.

O brave new worldThat has such people in ’t!

Let me not to the marriage of true mindsAdmit impediments. Love is not loveWhich 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 wandering bark,Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeksWithin his bending sickle’s compass come;Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,But bears it out even to the edge of doom.If this be error and upon me prov’d,I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyesI all alone beweep my outcast state,And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,And look upon myself, and curse my fate,Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,With what I most enjoy contented least;Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,Haply I think on thee, and then my state,Like to the lark at break of day arisingFrom sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth bringsThat then I scorn to change my state with kings.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

To me, fair friend, you never can be old,For as you were when first your eye I ey’d,Such seems your beauty still.

Some say that ever ’gainst that season comesWherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated,The bird of dawning singeth all night long;And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad,The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm;So hallow’d and so gracious is the time.

Thou art thy mother’s glass and she in theeCalls back the lovely April of her prime;So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement.Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy:For the apparel oft proclaims the man;And they in France of the best rank and stationAre of a most select and generous chief in that.Neither a borrower nor a lender be:For loan oft loses both itself and friend;And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

Nay, indeed, if you had your eyes, you might fail of the knowing me: it is a wise father that knows his own child.

The miserable have no other medicineBut only hope.

That time of year thou mayst in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.In me thou see’st the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west;Which by and by black night doth take away,Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed, whereon it must expire,Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.

How like a winter hath my absence beenFrom thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!What old December’s bareness everywhere!And yet this time removed was summer’s time;The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,Like widow’d wombs after their lords’ decease:Yet this abundant issue seem’d to meBut hope of orphans, and unfather’d fruit;For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,And, thou away, the very birds are mute:Or, if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer,That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

No longer mourn for me when I am deadThan you shall hear the surly sullen bellGive warning to the world that I am fledFrom this vile world with vilest worms to dwell:Nay, if you read this line, remember notThe hand that writ it, for I love you so,That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,If thinking on me then should make you woe.O if, I say, you look upon this verse,When I perhaps compounded am with clay,Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;But let your love even with my life decay;Lest the wise world should look into your moan,And mock you with me after I am gone.

Age cannot wither her, nor custom staleHer infinite variety.

No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under that was I born.