What Shakespeare Quotes

They can tell us not only what Shakespeare wrote but what he read. Geoffrey Bullough devoted a lifetime, nearly, to tracking down all possible sources for virtually everything mentioned in Shakespeare, producing eight volumes of devoted exposition revealing not only what Shakespeare knew but precisely how he knew it. ~ Bill Bryson

I'd like to be for cinema what Shakespeare was for theatre, Marx for politics and Freud for psychology: someone after whom nothing is as it used to be. ~ Rainer Werner Fassbinder

What Shakespeare really aimed to show: the destruction of a soul by demonic forces. ~ William Shakespeare

Like all men is distress,Gideon decided to do what Napoleon, what Shakespeare, what Alexander the Great would have done. There remained only the minor question, what is that? ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

When King Lear dies in Act V, do you know what Shakespeare has written? He's written "He dies." That's all, nothing more. No fanfare, no metaphor, no brilliant final words. The culmination of the most influential work of dramatic literature is "He dies." It takes Shakespeare, a genius, to come up with "He dies." And yet every time I read those two words, I find myself overwhelmed with dysphoria. And I know it's only natural to be sad, but not because of the words "He dies." but because of the life we saw prior to the words. ~ Suzanne Weyn

All men die in solitude; all values are degraded in a state of misery: that is what Shakespeare tells me ~ Eugene Ionesco

What Shakespeare was able to do in English he would certainly not have done in French. ~ Victor Hugo

Anyway, there is an essential difference in gender that isn't politically correct to mention these days. Women are the ones to bear the children after all. They are the ones to nurse. They are the ones, traditionally, who care for the infants. That takes a huge amount of time.'
He smiled, waiting for the applause, but something had gone wrong. There was a cold silence from the crowd...
'Did you just say that women aren't creative geniuses because they have babies?'
'No," he said, 'No. Not because. I wouldn't say that. I love women, and not all women have babies. My wife, for one, at least not yet. But listen, we're all given a finite amount of creativity, just like we;re given a finite amount of life, and if a woman continues to spend hers creating actual life and not imaginary life, that's a glorious choice. When a woman has a baby, she's creating so much more than just a world on the page, she's creating life itself, not just a simulacrum. No matter what Shakespeare did, it's so much less than your average illiterate woman of his age who had babies. Those babies were our ancestors, necessary to make everyone here today, and no one could seriously argue that any play is worth a single human wife. I mean the history of the stage supports me here. If women have historically demonstrated less creative genius than men, it's because they're making their creations internal, spending the energies on life itself. It's a kind of bodily genius. You can't tell me that is ~ Lauren Groff

But hell can endure for only a limited period, and life will begin again one day. History may perhaps have
an end; but our task is not to terminate it but to create it, in the image of what we henceforth know to be
true. Art, at least, teaches us that man cannot be explained by history alone and that he also finds a reason
for his existence in the order of nature. For him, the great god Pan is not dead. His most instinctive act of
rebellion, while it affirms the value and the dignity common to all men, obstinately claims, so as to satisfy
its hunger for unity, an integral part of the reality whose name is beauty. One can reject all history and yet
accept the world of the sea and the stars. The rebels who wish to ignore nature and beauty are condemned
to banish from history everything with which they want to construct the dignity of existence and of labor.
Every great reformer tries to create in history what Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere, and Tolstoy knew
how to create: a world always ready to satisfy the hunger for freedom and dignity which every man
carries in his heart. Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions
will have need of beauty. The procedure of beauty, which is to contest reality while endowing it with
unity, is also the procedure of rebellion. Is it possible eternally to reject injustice without ceasing to
acclaim the nature of man and the beauty of the world ~ Albert Camus

If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did ... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it. ~ Michael Morpurgo

What Shakespeare and the Greeks were able to do was radically question what it meant to be a human being. ~ Edward Bond

Still, a living, breathing human being
even a boneheaded or barely articulate one
conveys so much in person. The physical fact of a creature with heart thrumming and neurons flickering
what Shakespeare called the 'poor, bare, forked animal'
compels us all; we're all hardwired in moments of empathy to see ourselves in another. ~ Mary Karr

Such as we are made of, such we be. ~ William Shakespeare

Don't you sometimes find it hard to remember God all through your work?" asked Clementina.
"I don't try to consciously remember Him every moment. For He is in everything, whether I am thinking of it or not. When I go fishing, I go to catch God's fish. When I take Kelpie out, I am teaching one of God's wild creatures. When I read the Bible or Shakespeare, I am listening to the word of God, uttered in each after its own kind. When the wind blows on my face, it is God's wind. ~ George MacDonald

Manhood is melted into courtesies, valor into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones, too. ~ William Shakespeare

Was Mann himself fully aware of all the facets of his irony? Probably not - any more than Shakespeare was fully aware of all the riches subsequent critics have found in his plays. ~ Philip Kitcher

The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law. - Romeo ~ William Shakespeare

Verily, I swear, 'tis better to be lowly born, and range with humble livers in content, than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief, and wear a golden sorrow. ~ William Shakespeare

No reckoning made, but sent to my account with all my imperfections on my head. ~ William Shakespeare

Famous Quotes on: Honesty, Wisdom, Thomas Jefferson
Rich honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house; as your pearl in a foul oyster. ~ William Shakespeare

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? ~ William Shakespeare

Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway, meeting the check of such another day. ~ William Shakespeare

One of the reasons the English got through all their falls and the loss of their empire, all their disasters, their strikes, their difficulties, their wars through the years was they had Shakespeare to fall back on. And they speak well in England. ~ Norman Mailer

ALCIBIADES: How came the noble Timon to this change?
TIMON: As the moon does, by wanting light to give:
But then renew I could not, like the moon;
There were no suns to borrow of. ~ William Shakespeare

He makes a July's day short as December. ~ William Shakespeare

If she be fair and wise, fairness and wit,
The one's for use, the other useth it. ~ William Shakespeare

Ice princess? Hardly. She was the opposite of cold. Christ, just the sight of her made Matty want to speak in fucking verse like he was Shakespeare incarnate. Genna ~ J.M. Darhower

Call it not patience, Gaunt; it is despair: ~ William Shakespeare

The benediction of these covering heavens Fall on their heads like dew, for they are worthy To inlay heaven with stars. ~ William Shakespeare

Cursed be he that moves my bones. ~ William Shakespeare

I want to take a trip to Shakespeare's brain and vacation there with his thoughts may be I also start writing about twisted love and betrayals. ~ Megha Khare

I bear a charmed life, which must not yield
To one of woman born. ~ William Shakespeare

Fight valiantly to-day; and yet I do thee wrong to mind thee of it, for thou art framed of the firm truth of valor. ~ William Shakespeare

I cannot speak your england. ~ William Shakespeare

My master hath been an honorable gentleman; tricks he hath had in him which gentlemen have. ~ William Shakespeare

Romeo: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
Mercutio: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man. ~ William Shakespeare

Must embrace the fate of that dark hour ~ William Shakespeare

Many that are not mad have, sure, more lack of reason. ~ William Shakespeare

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know; ~ William Shakespeare

Thrice is he arm'd that hath his quarrel just, And he but naked, though lock'd up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted. ~ William Shakespeare

And blind oblivion swallowed cities up. ~ William Shakespeare

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy ~ Julia Gregson

See first that the design is wise and just: that ascertained, pursue it resolutely; do not for one repulse forego the purpose that you resolved to effect. ~ William Shakespeare

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The 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 end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub. ~ William Shakespeare