I’m going to admit it here first: I love Shakespeare. I have a hard time understanding him sometimes and I usually have to read it through very slowly, but I love it. In my personal, yet humble opinion, I feel as though he said some of the things people then, and now, are afraid to say. He is comical, heart wrenching, touching, depressing, and beautiful all at once. And so, I’m devoting this page to some of my favorite Shakespeare quotes. Some you may be familiar with, some less so, regardless I hope you enjoy!
Click here for Much Ado About Nothing
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic mad with evermore unrest,
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed. . .
~Sonnet 147
If it proves so, then loving goes by haps;
Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.
~Much Ado About Nothing
There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned.
~Antony and Cleopatra
For aught that I could ever rea,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth
~A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind
~A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never
~Much Ado About Nothing
But I beseech your Grace pardon me.
I was born to speak all mirth and no matter.
~Much Ado About Nothing
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.
~Twelfth Night
Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time
~The Merchant of Venice
O, swear not by the moon, th’ inconstant moon,
That monthly change in her circle orb
Lest that they love prove likewise variable
~Romeo and Juliet
What should I do with him—dress him in my apparel and make him my waiting gentlewoman? He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man; and he that is more than a youth is not for me, and he that is less than a man, I am not for him.
~Much Ado About Nothing
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve 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
~Macbeth
Who can be wise, amazed, temp’rate, and furious,
Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.
~Macbeth
