Quotes by William Shakespeare

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.””

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.””

“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.””

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.””

“When he shall die,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 nightAnd pay no worship to the garish sun.””

“If music be the food of love, play on;Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,The appetite may sicken, and so die.That strain again! it had a dying fall:O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,That breathes upon a bank of violets,Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,That, notwithstanding thy capacityReceiveth as the sea, nought enters there,Of what validity and pitch soe'er,But falls into abatement and low price,Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancyThat it alone is high fantastical.””

“We know what we are, but not what we may be.””

“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.””

“These violent delights have violent endsAnd in their triumph die, like fire and powder,Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honeyIs loathsome in his own deliciousnessAnd in the taste confounds the appetite.Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.””

“You speak an infinite deal of nothing.””

“Words are easy, like the wind; faithful friends are hard to find.””

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;No more; and by a sleep to say we endThe heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummationDevoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;For in that sleep of death what dreams may comeWhen we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause: there's the respectThat makes calamity of so long life;For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,The insolence of office and the spurnsThat patient merit of the unworthy takes,When he himself might his quietus makeWith a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,To grunt and sweat under a weary life,But that the dread of something after death,The undiscover'd country from whose bournNo traveller returns, puzzles the willAnd makes us rather bear those ills we haveThan fly to others that we know not of?Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;And thus the native hue of resolutionIs sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,And enterprises of great pith and momentWith this regard their currents turn awry,And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisonsBe all my sins remember'd!””

“Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.””

“Though she be but little, she is fierce!””