William Shakespeare
Books and Quotes Collection
Henry VI, Part 3
1591Henry VI, Part 2
1591Henry VI, Part 1
1591
She is not hot, but temperate as the morn.
[…] let their heads be sleekly comb’d, their blue coats brush’d and their garters of an indifferent knit
[T]his is a guift / Very gratefull, I am sure of it, to expresse / The like kindnesse my selfe, that have beene / More kindely beholding to you then any: […]
The Comedy of Errors
1592
O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note.
I am possest with an adulterate blot, / My bloud is mingled with the crime of lust: […]
Now as I am a Christian answer me, / In what safe place you have bestow'd my monie; / Or I shall breake that merrie sconce of yours / That stands on tricks, when I am undispos'd: / Where is the thousand Markes thou hadst of me?
Titus Andronicus
1593Richard III
1594
“Small herbs have grace; great weeds do grow apace.” / And since, methinks I would not grow so fast, / Because sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.
A beauty-waining and distressed widow [Elizabeth Woodville], / Even in the afternoone of her best daies / Made prise and purchase of his [Edward IV's] lustfull eye, / Seduct the pitch and height of al his thoughts, / To base declension and loathd bigamie, / By her in his unlawfull bed he got.
The Rape of Lucrece
1594
Lvcius Tarquinius (for his excessive pride surnamed Superbus) after hee had caused his owne father in law Seruius Tullius to be cruelly murdred, and contrarie to the Romaine lawes and customes, not requiring or staying for the peoples suffrages, had possessed himselfe of the kingdome: […]
Such hazard now must doting Tarqvin make, / Pawning his honor to obtaine his lust, / And for himselfe, himselfe he must forsake.
Thou foul abettor! thou notorious bawd! /
Thou plantest scandal and displacest laud:
King John
1595
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan, /
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death, /
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings /
His soul and body to their lasting rest.
[…] this is the bloodiest shame, /
The wildest savagery, the vilest stroke, /
That ever wall-eyed wrath or staring rage /
Presented to the tears of soft remorse.
The Dolphin is too wilfull opposite, / And will not temporize with my intreaties: / He flatly saies, heell not lay downe his Armes.
If but a dozen French / Were there in arms, they would be as a call / To train ten thousand English to their side.
Richard II
1595
And as imagination bodies forth / The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen / Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name.
Come recreant, come thou childe, / Ile whippe thee with a rodde. He is defil'd, / That drawes a sword on thee.
Or in the night, imagining some feare, / How easie is a bush suppos’d a Beare?
Have you no modesty, no maiden shame?
Romeo and Juliet
1597
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? / Deny thy father and refuse thy name. / Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, / And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
My master knows not but I am gone hence, / And fearfully did menace me with death / If I did stay to look on his intents.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes /
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face! /
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave? /
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical! /
Dove-feather’d raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
If I may trust the flattering truth of sleepe, / My dreames presage some joyfull newes at hand : / My bosomes L. sits lightly in his throne : / And all this day an unaccustom’d spirit, / Lifts me above the ground with cheatfull thoughts […]
Henry IV, Part 1
1597
See how this river comes me cranking in, / And cuts me from the best of all my land / A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.
There is a thing Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is knowne to many in our land by the name of pitch. This pitch (as ancient writers do report) doth defile, ſo doth the companie thou keepest: […]
If we without his helpe can make a head / To push against a kingdome, with his helpe / We shal oreturne it topsie turvy down, [...]
Fal. Thou say'st true Lad: is not my Hostesse of the Taverne a most sweet Wench? / Prin. As is the hony, my old Lad of the Castle: and is not a Buffe Jerkin a most sweet robe of durance?
What I know / Is ruminated, plotted, and set down.
Come, let vs take a muster speedily: / Doomesday is neere; dye all, dye merrily.
Love's Labour's Lost
1598
There's more depends on this than on the value. /
The dearest ring in Venice will I give you, /
And find it out by proclamation: /
Only for this, I pray you, pardon me.
I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it.
Let's in, and there expect their coming.
There's not the smallest orbe which thou beholdst, / But in his motion like an Angell sings, / Still quiring to the young eide Cherubins; / Such harmony is in immortall soules, / But whilst this muddy vesture of decay / Doth grossely close in it, we cannot heare it.
As You Like It
1599
Firm and irrevocable is my doom / Which I have pass'd upon her; she is banish'd.
[…] this fellow will but join you together as they join wainscot; then one of you will prove a shrunk panel, and like green timber, warp, warp.
I'll put myself in poor and mean attire, /
And with a kind of umber smirch my face; /
The like do you; so shall we pass along, /
And never stir assailants.
I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician’s, which is fantastical; nor the courtier’s, which is proud; nor the soldier’s, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer’s, which is politic; nor the lady’s, which is nice; nor the lover’s, which is all these; but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of my travels; in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.
If I could meet / that fancy-monger, I would give him some good / counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love / upon him.
Corin: You have too courtly a wit for me; I’ll rest.
Now tell me how long you would have her, after you have possest her?
There were none principal; they were all like one another as halfpence are; every one fault seeming monstrous till his fellow fault came to match it.
"Thus we may see," quoth he, "how the world wags."
Under the greene wood tree, / Who loves to lye with mee, / And turne his merrie Note, / Unto the sweet Birds throte: / Come hither, come hither, come hither: / Heere shall he see no enemie, / But Winter and rough Weather.
Hamlet
1599
I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
For 'tis the sport to have the enginer /
Hoist with his own petard; and 't shall go hard /
But I will delve one yard below their mines /
And blow them at the moon.
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, /
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, /
Whiles, like a puffed and reckless libertine, /
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, /
And recks not his own rede.
The glowworm shows the matin to be near / And ’gins to pale his uneffectual fire. / Adieu, adieu, adieu! Remember me.
There is a willow grows aslant a brook, /
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
Is not this something more than fantasy?
Get thee [to] a Nunry, why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners, I am my selfe indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse mee of such things, that it were better my Mother had not bourne mee […]
Thus has he, and many more of the same breed that I /
know the drossy age dotes on, only got the tune of the /
time and, out of an habit of encounter, a kind of /
yeasty collection, which carries them through and /
through the most profane and winnowed opinions
Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands /
Unite commutual in most sacred bands.
You had musty victual, and he hath holp to eat it; he is a very valiant trencher-man; he hath an excellent stomach.
I cannot bid you bid my daughter live, / That were impossible, but I pray you both, / Possess the people in Messina here, / How innocent she died, […]
Leonato. By my troth neece thou wilt never get thee a husband, if thou be so shrewd of thy tongue. / brother Infaith shees too curst. / Beatrice Too curst is more then curst, I shall lessen Gods sending that way, for it is saide, God sends a curst cow short hornes, but to a cow too curst, he sends none.
Henry V
1599
I am a king that find thee; and I know 'Tis not the balm, the sceptre, and the ball, The sword, the mace, the crown imperial, The intertissued robe of gold and pearl
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; /
Let pry through the portage of the head /
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it /
As fearfully as doth a galled rock /
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, /
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Pish for thee, Iceland dog! thou prick-ear'd cur of Iceland!
Henry IV, Part 2
1599
His wit's as thick as Tewksbury mustard; there is no more conceit in him than is in a mallet.
For what's more miserable than discontent?
O if I had had time to have made new liveries: I woulde have bestowed the thousand pound I borrowed of you, but tis no matter, this poore shew doth better, this doth inferre the zeale I had to see him.
Julius Caesar
1599Troilus and Cressida
1602Twelfth Night
1602Measure for Measure
1604
[…] Thyself and thy belongings /
Are not thine own so proper as to waste /
Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee.
You do blaspheme the good in mocking me.
a man of stricture and firm abstinence
[…] we shall have all the world drinke browne & white bastard.
Hold therefore Angelo: / In our remove, be thou at full, our selfe: / Mortallitie and Mercie in Vienna / Live in thy tongue, and heart: Old Escalus / Though first in question, is thy secondary. / Take thy Commission.
Acquaint her with the danger of my state, / Implore her, in my voice, that she make friends / To the strict deputie: […]
Macbeth
1606
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, / And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
And pity, like a naked new-born babe, / Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin, hors’d / Upon the sightless couriers of the air, / Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, / That tears shall drown the wind.
Not in the legions / Of horrid hell can come a devil more damn’d / In evils to top Macbeth.
Will all great Neptunes ocean wash this blood / Cleane from my Hand? no: this my Hand will rather / The multitudinous Seas incarnardine, / Making the Greene one, Red.
Were such things here, as we doe speake about? / Or have we eaten on the insane Root, / That takes the Reason Prisoner?
Thrice the brinded Cat hath mew'd.
Come, thick Night, / And pall thee in the dunnest smoake of Hell, / That my keene Knife see not the Wound it makes, / Nor Heaven peepe through the Blanket of the darke, / To cry, hold, hold.
King Lear
1606
I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed unhappily: as of unnaturalness between the child and the parent; death, dearth, dissolutions of ancient amities; divisions in state, menaces and maledictions against king and nobles; needless diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation of cohorts, nuptial breaches, and I know not what.
This world I do renounce, and in your sights /
Shake patiently my great affliction off.
When I desir’d their leave that I might pity him, they took from me the use of mine own house, charg’d me on pain of perpetual displeasure neither to speak of him, entreat for him, nor any way sustain him.
If she must teem, / Create her child of spleen.
Antony and Cleopatra
1607
Assemble we immediate council.
I had as lief have a reed that will do me no service as a partisan I could not heave.
Sometimes we see a cloud that's dragonish; A vapour sometime like a bear or lion, / A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock, / A forked mountain, or blue promontory / With trees upon't, that nod unto the world, / And mock our eyes with air: thou hast seen these signs; / They are black vesper's pageants.
Coriolanus
1608
There was a time when all the body’s members /
Rebelled against the belly, thus accused it: /
That only like a gulf it did remain /
I’ th’ midst o’ th’ body, idle and unactive, /
Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing
You […] That preferre / A Noble life, before a Long, and Wish / To iumpe a Body with a dangerous Physicke, / That's sure of death without it: at once plucke out / The Multitudinous Tongue, let them not licke / The sweet which is their poyson.
Lay the fault on us.
Do you hear how we are shent for keeping your greatness back?
For the mutable ranke-sented Meynie, / Let them regard me, as I doe not flatter, / And therein behold themselves.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? /
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are, / Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
Nor can thy shame give phisicke to my griefe,
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, / But sad mortality o’er-sways their power, / How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, / Whose action is no stronger than a flower?
Then beautious nigard why doost thou abuse / The bountious largesse given thee to give?
Within thine owne bud buriest thy content, / And tender chorle makst wast in niggarding: […]
The Winter's Tale
1611
The blessed gods / Purge all infection from our air whilst you / Do climate here!
The white sheet bleaching on the hedge, / With heigh! the sweet birds, O, how they sing!
as she hath / Been publicly accused, so shall she have / A just and open trial
Was not my Lord /
The veryer Wag o'th' two?
I dare lay mine honour / He will remain so.
The Tempest
1611
I'll show thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries; / I'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough. / A plague upon the tyrant that I serve! / I'll bear him no more sticks, but follow thee, / Thou wondrous man.
Now would I give a thousand furlongs of Sea, for an Acre of barren ground: Long heath, Browne firrs, any thing; the wills above be done, but I would faine dye a dry death.
Heigh, my hearts! Cheerly, cheerly, my hearts.
Sir, I invite your Highness and your train / To my poor cell, where you shall take your rest / For this one night
[T]here thou maist braine him, / Having first seiz'd his bookes: […] Remember / First to possesse his Bookes; for without them / Hee's but a Sot, as I am; […]
all thy vexations / Were but my trials of thy love and thou / Hast strangely stood the test here
Why, as I told thee, 'tis a custom with him /
I' th' afternoon to sleep: there thou may'st brain him, /
Having first seiz'd his books; or with a log /
Batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake, /
Or cut his wezand with thy knife
How lush and lusty the grasse lookes ? How greene ?
Cymbeline
1611Henry VIII
1613
No discerner durst wag his tongue in censure.
but if I spared any / That had a head to hit, either young or old, / He or she, cuckold or cuckold-maker, / Let me ne'er hope to see a chine again
[…] if you omit /
The offer of this time, I cannot promise /
But that you shall sustain moe new disgraces, /
With these you bear already.
Books Collection
Henry VI, Part 3
Henry VI, Part 2
Henry VI, Part 1
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Taming of the Shrew
The Comedy of Errors
Titus Andronicus
Richard III
The Rape of Lucrece
King John
Richard II
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Romeo and Juliet
Henry IV, Part 1
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Love's Labour's Lost
The Merchant of Venice
All's Well That Ends Well
As You Like It
Henry V
Henry IV, Part 2
Julius Caesar
Troilus and Cressida
Twelfth Night
Othello
Measure for Measure
Macbeth
King Lear
Antony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
The Winter's Tale
The Tempest
Cymbeline
Henry VIII
The Two Noble Kinsmen
Pro
Hamlet
Pro
Much Ado About Nothing