Shakespeare Parody Quotes

To explode or to implode - said Qwfwq - that is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to expand one's energies in space without restraint, or to crush them into a dense inner concentration and, by ingesting, cherish them. To steal away, to vanish; no more; to hold within oneself every gleam, every ray, deny oneself every vent, suffocating in the depths of the soul the conflicts that so idly trouble it, give them their quietus; to hide oneself, to obliterate oneself; perchance to awaken elsewhere, unchanged. ~ Italo Calvino

Shakespeare never did this. ~ Charles Bukowski

Do not banish reason for inequality; but let your reason serve to make the truth appear where it seems hid, and hide the false seems true. ~ William Shakespeare

Reading Shakespeare is sometimes like looking through a window into a dark room. You don't see in. You see nothing but a reflection of yourself unable to see in. An unflattering image of yourself blind. ~ Antony Sher

FIRST MURDERER:
Where is your husband?

LADY MACDUFF:
I hope, in no place so unsanctified
Where such as thou mayst find him. ~ William Shakespeare

And pity, like a new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. ~ William Shakespeare

When you know your cast well and their strengths and weaknesses, you can start writing for them, just the way Shakespeare wrote for his actors. ~ Stephen Sondheim

Music oft hath such a charm
To make bad good, and good provoke to harm. ~ William Shakespeare

My father was an athlete, a great athlete, fought in the Marines in World War I. He was all sports and activity. My mother was all academics. I still have the complete works of Shakespeare that she had. ~ Marv Levy

It's the remarkable thing about academics: they look at Shakespeare and always see their own faces in him. ~ Amanda Craig

But yesterday the word of Caesar might
Have stood against the world; now lies he there.
And none so poor to do him reverence.
O masters, if I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,
Who, you all know, are honourable men:
I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you,
Than I will wrong such honourable men.
But here's a parchment with the seal of Caesar;
I found it in his closet, 'tis his will:
Let but the commons hear this testament
Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read
And they would go and kiss dead Caesar's wounds
And dip their napkins in his sacred blood,
Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,
And, dying, mention it within their wills,
Bequeathing it as a rich legacy
Unto their issue. ~ William Shakespeare

I have grown up loving Shakespeare. ~ Ralph Fiennes

But cruel are the times, when we are traitors,
And do not know ourselves; when we hold rumour
From what we fear, yet know not what we fear,
But float upon a wild and violent sea
Each way and none ~ William Shakespeare

Isaiah Berlin once said that there are two kinds of writers, hedgehogs and foxes. He said the fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows just one thing. So Shakespeare is a typical fox; Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are typical hedgehogs. Now, I'm a typical hedgehog. I know just one thing, and I repeat it over and over again. I try to approach it from different angles to make it look different, but it's the same thing. ~ Colin Wilson

I like him not, nor stands it safe with us
To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you;
I your commission will forthwith dispatch,
And he to England shall along with you:
The terms of our estate may not endure
Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow
Out of his lunacies. ~ William Shakespeare

A lean cheek, - a blue eye, and sunken, - an unquestionable spirit, - a beard neglected:- Then your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unhanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation. ~ William Shakespeare

The error of our eye directs our mind.
What error leads must err. ~ William Shakespeare

All of my education at Harvard, then Oxford, then Paris was in literature - even my thesis was on Shakespeare. ~ Jonathan Kozol

Tears shall drown the wind ~ William Shakespeare

Sonnet 23
As an unperfect actor on the stage,
Who with his fear is put besides his part,
Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart;
So I, for fear of trust, forget to say
The perfect ceremony of love's rite,
And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,
O'ercharg'd with burden of mine own love's might.
O, let my books be then the eloquence
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast;
Who plead for love, and look for recompense,
More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.
O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit. ~ William Shakespeare

The tyrant custom, most grave senators,
Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war
My thrice-driven bed of down. ~ William Shakespeare

What courage, man! What though care killed a cat? Thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care. ~ William Shakespeare

O Hero, what a Hero hadst thou been. ~ William Shakespeare

Twenty years earlier, in a life [Kirsten] mostly couldn't remember, she had had a small nonspeaking role in a short-lived Toronto production of King Lear. Now she walked in sandals whose soles had been cut from an automobile tire, three knives in her belt. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

Obviously we had to study Shakespeare at school, but to be honest, I was not a fan. I found the language very difficult, and I didn't enjoy watching it or studying it. I auditioned five times for the Royal Shakespeare Company early on in my career, and I didn't even get past the first rounds. ~ Samuel Barnett

When I first started acting, and we would all sit down and talk about Shakespeare and how great it was. I thought well, I suppose it is. ~ Judy Davis

We were not allowed to say, Screw, but we could say, Hump the hostess, because hump is in Shakespeare. ~ Uta Hagen

Or the Department of Education and another ministry were worried about duplication of effort, so what did they do? They set up two committees to look into duplication and neither knew what the other was up to. It really is a world beyond parody. ~ Rory Bremner

Our separation so abides, and flies,
That thou, residing here, go'st yet with me,
And I, hence fleeting, here remain with thee. ~ William Shakespeare

As many arrows, loosed several ways, come to one mark ... so many a thousand actions, once afoot, end in one purpose. ~ William Shakespeare

Earlier I described the component stages of sleep. Here, I reveal the attendant virtues of each. Ironically, most all of the "new," twenty-first century discoveries regarding sleep were delightfully summarized in 1611 in Macbeth, act two, scene two, where Shakespeare prophetically states that sleep is "the chief nourisher in life's feast."* Perhaps, with less highfalutin language, your mother offered similar advice, extolling the benefits of sleep in healing emotional wounds, helping you learn and remember, gifting you with the solutions to challenging problems, and preventing sickness and infection. Science, it seems has simply been evidential, providing proof of everything your mother, and apparently Shakespeare, knew about the wonders of sleep.

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*"Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, source labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast,--"
William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Folger Shakespeare Library (New York: Simon & Schuster; first edition, 2003). ~ Matthew Walker

And too soon marr'd are those so early made.
The earth hath swallow'd all my hopes but she,
She is the hopeful lady of my earth:
But woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart,
My will to her consent is but a part;
An she agree, within her scope of choice
Lies my consent and fair according voice.
This night I hold an old accustom'd feast,
Whereto I have invited many a guest,
Such as I love; and you, among the store,
One more, most welcome, makes my number more.
At my poor house look to behold this night
Earth-treading stars that make dark heaven light:
Such comfort as do lusty young men feel
When well-apparell'd April on the heel
Of limping winter treads, even such delight
Among fresh female buds shall you this night
Inherit at my house; hear all, all see,
And like her most whose merit most shall be:
Which on more view, of many mine being one
May stand in number, though in reckoning none,
Come, go with me. ~ William Shakespeare

Having no recourse, I feel back on Shakespeare. Leif would recognize it and understand the context properly. With my remaining few seconds of consciousness, I quoted Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing, who spoke these words to his former friend:
"you are a Villain: I jest not." and then I collapsed into a pool of my own blood. ~ Kevin Hearne

Think you I am no stronger than my own sex being so father'd and husbanded? ~ William Shakespeare

Sir Toby Belch: "Dost think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?" (Twelfth Night) ~ William Shakespeare

If the skin were parchment and the blows you gave were ink,
Your own handwriting would tell you what I think. ~ William Shakespeare

If you see a fairy ring
In a field of grass,
Very lightly step around,
Tiptoe as you pass;
Last night fairies frolicked there,
And they're sleeping somewhere near. ~ William Shakespeare