Assorted Quotations
Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
II,iii,315, Parolles:
A young man married is a man that's marred.
V,iii,325, Lafeu:
Mine eyes smell onions; I shall weep anon.
AS YOU LIKE IT
II,v,12, Jaques:
I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs.
III,ii,39, Touchstone:
Truly, thou art damned like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side.
HAMLET
I,i,113, Horatio:
In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets:
I,v,13, Ghost:
But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison-house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combind locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.
III,ii,413, Polonius:
'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.
HENRY IV, PT 1
III,i,128, Hotspur:
I had rather be a kitten and cry mew
Than one of these metre ballad-mongers.
V,iv,81, Hotspur:
But thought's the slave of life, and life time's fool;
And time, that take survey of all the world,
Must have a stop.
HENRY V
III,i,1, Henry:
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
IV,iii,60, Henry:
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today 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 accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Cripin's day.
HENRY VI, PT 3
IV,viii,7, Clarence:
A little fire is quickly trodden out,
Which being suffered, rivers cannot quench.
HENRY VIII
III,ii,224, Wolsey:
I have touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;
And, from that full meridian of my glory,
I haste now to my setting: I shall fall
Like a bright exhalation in the evening
And no man see me more.
IV,ii,45, Griffith:
Men's evil manners live in brass; their virtues
We write in water.
JULIUS CŪSAR
I,ii,191, Cūsar:
Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-heeded men and such as sleep o' nights;
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
II,i,22, Brutus:
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round,
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
II,ii,17, Calpurnia:
A lioness hath whelped in the streets;
And graves have yawn'd, and yielded up their dead;
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;
The noise of battle hurtled in the air,
Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.
By which he did ascend.
III,ii,265: Marcus Antonius:
Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot,
Take thou what course thou wilt!
IV,iii,217, Brutus:
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
KING JOHN
III,iv,108, Lewis:
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale,
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
KING LEAR
III,ii,1, Lear:
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-courtiers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Smtie flat the thick rotundity o' the world!
IV,i,36, Glouchester:
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport.
LOVE'S LABOURS LOST
III,i,181, Biron:
This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy;
This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,
The annointed sovereign of sighs and groans,
Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,
Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,
IV,iii,333, Biron:
It adds a precious seeing to the eye;
A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;
A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound.
IV,iii,344, Biron:
When Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony.
MACBETH
I,iii,146, Macbeth:
Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
II,ii,36, Macbeth:
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast--
MEASURE FOR MEASURE
II,ii,90, Angelo:
The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.
IV,iii,193, Lucio:
I am a kind of burr; I shall stick.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
V,i,35, Leonato:
For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently,
OTHELLO
I,iii,143, Othello:
The Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.
PERICLES
II,I,29
3rd Fisherman: I marvel how the fishes live in the sea.
1st Fisherman: Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.
RICHARD II
I,iii,294, Bolingbroke:
O! who can hold a fire in his hand
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
By bare imagination of a feast?
Or wallow naked in December snow
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat?
O, no! the apprehension of the good
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse.
III,i,21, Bolingbroke:
And sigh'd my English breath in foreign clouds,
Eating the bitter bread of banishment.
III,ii,54, King Richard:
Not all the water in the rough rude sea
Can wash the balm from an anointed king;
The breath of worldly men cannot dispose
The deputy elected by the Lord.
IV,i,192, King Richard:
You may my glories and my state depose,
but not my griefs; still am I king of those.
IV,i,207, King Richard:
With mine own tears I wash away my balm,
With mine own hands I give away my crown.
V,ii,23, York:
As in a theatre, the eyes of men,
After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
Thinking his prattle to be tedious.
V,v,42, King Richard:
How sour sweet music is
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
So is it in the music of men's lives.
RICHARD III
I,i,1, Gloucester (Richard):
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York.
I,i,20, Gloucester:
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them.
IV,ii,16, King Richard:
Shall I be plain? I wish the bastards dead;
And I would have it suddenly perform'd.
IV,iii,1, Tyrrel:
The tyrannous and bloody deed is done,
The most arch act of piteous massacre
...girdling one another
Within their innocent alabaster arms:
Their lips were four red roses on a stalk
Which in their summer beauty kiss'd each other.
V,iv,7, King Richard:
A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
ROMEO AND JULIET
Prologue:
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From Ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
III,i,101, Mercutio:
No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow and you shall find me a grave man.
III,i,112, Mercutio:
A plague o' both your houses!
They have made worms's meat of me.
III,v,9, Romeo:
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
THE TEMPEST
III,ii,141, Stephano:
He that dies pays all debts.
V.i.182
Miranda: O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in 't!
Prospero: 'Tis new to thee.
TIMON OF ATHENS
I,i,21, Poet:
Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes
From whence 'tis nourished.
I,ii,150, Apemantus:
Men shut their doors against a setting sun.
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA
I,iii,109, Ulysses:
Take but degree away, untune that string
And hark what discord follows; each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy.
III,ii,163, Cressida:
To be wise, and love,
Exceeds man's might.
III,iii,145, Ulysses:
Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:
Those scraps are good deeds past; which are devour'd
As fast as they are made, forgot as soon
As done: perseverance, dear my lord,
Keeps honour bright: to have done, is to hang
Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail
In monumental mockery.
III,iii,165, Ulysses:
Time is like a fashionable host
That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,
And with his arms outstretched,as he would fly,
Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles,
And farewell goes out sighing.
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA
I,iii,84, Proteus:
O! how this spring of love rsembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day,
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
And by and by a cloud takes all away!
THE WINTER'S TALE
I,ii,62, Polixenes:
We were, fair queen,
Two lads that thought there was no more behind
But such a day to-morrow as to-day,
And to be boy eternal.
I,ii,67, Polixenes:
We were as twinn'd lambs, that did frisk i' the sun,
And bleat the one at the other: what we changhed
Was innocence for innocence; we knew not
The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream'd
that any did.
II,iii,153, Leontes:
I am a feather for each wind that blows.
III,iii,57, stage direction:
exit, pursued by a bear.
III,iii,58, Shepherd:
I would there no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting--Hark you now! Would any but these boiled brains of nineteen and two-and-twenty hunt this weather?
IV,iii,1, Autolycus
When daffodils begin to peer,
With heigh! the doxy, over the dale,
Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year;
For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale.
IV,iv,734, Autolycus
Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.
IV,iv,743, Autolycus
Let me have no lying: it becomes none but tradesmen.