In an age where social appearances matter like never before and with the many ways you could impress someone, there’s one medium that will never, never ever fail to show those around you how smart and how educated you are. Want to guess what that is? Well, it’s an easy guess since you probably read the article’s title before opening it. Yup, it’s the never-failing Shakespeare quotes that are guaranteed to elevate your mind and your social persona to the heights of the master’s quill. All you have to do is pick some of the moving quotes from our Shakespeare quotes list, memorize or jot them down somewhere, and voila – instant smarts!
You might know Shakespeare as the greatest (if not The Greatest) story writer ever, but did you know that he’s also responsible for creating puns? And not only puns but also the predecessor of Yo Mamma jokes? See, the old scribbler, besides being ingeniously genius, also had a nice sense of humor, which is just another witness of his soaring intelligence, of course. So while no one will ever top Shakespeare’s wit and grace of the pen, we can at least enter into his mind by reading these smart quotes of his. And that ain’t too shabby at all!
So, scroll on down below and check out our selection of the most impressive Shakespeare quotes. Once you are there, vote for the world-shattering and eye-opening quotes of your choice and share this article with anyone who’s in need of some quality content today.
#1
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” – ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’
#2
“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” – ‘The Merchant of Venice’
#3
“‘Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after.” – ‘Timon Of Athens’
#4
“Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.” – Gloucester, ‘King Henry VI’
#5
“‘I can see that he’s not in your good books,’ said the messenger. ‘No, and if he were I would burn my library.’” – ‘Much Ado About Nothing’
#6
“Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.” – ‘Othello’
#7
“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.” – ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’
#8
“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” – Touchstone, ‘As You Like It’
#9
“Though she be but little, she is fierce.” – Helena, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
#10
“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.” – Jaques, ‘As You Like It’
#11
“The fault… is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” – Julius Caesar, “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar”
#12
“How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.” – ‘Merchant of Venice’
#13
“To be, or not to be: that is the question.” – Prince Hamlet, ‘Hamlet’
#14
“Don’t waste your love on somebody, who doesn’t value it.” – Juliet, “Romeo and Juliet”
#15
“You speak an infinite deal of nothing.” – ‘The Merchant of Venice’
#16
“This above all; to thine own self be true.”
#17
“Words are easy, like the wind; faithful friends are hard to find.”
#18
“Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it.” – Lady Macbeth, ‘Macbeth’
#19
“Thought is free.” – ‘The Tempest’
#20
“Men should be what they seem.” – ‘Othello’
#21
“Talking isn’t doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.” – ‘King Henry VIII’
#22
“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.” – Gratiano, ‘The Merchant of Venice’
#23
“And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.” – ‘As You Like It’
#24
“Our bodies are our gardens to the which our wills are gardeners.” – ‘Othello’
#25
“Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake.” – ‘Romeo & Juliet’
#26
“The course of true love never did run smooth.” – Lysander, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
#27
“Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak.” – ‘As You Like It’
#28
“I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.” – Beatrice, ‘Much Ado About Nothing’
#29
“Men in rage strike those that wish them best.” Iago, ‘Othello’
#30
“Boldness be my friend.” – Iachimo, ‘Cymbeline’
#31
“Such as we are made of, such we be.” – Viola, ‘Twelfth Night’
#32
“I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it.” – ‘As You Like It’
#33
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
#34
“All things are ready, if our mind be so.” – ‘Henry V’
#35
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate.” – ‘Sonnet 18’
#36
“Love sought is good, but given unsought, is better.” – Olivia, ‘Twelfth Night’
#37
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”
#38
“Listen to many, speak to a few.” – Polonius, ‘Hamlet’
#39
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!”
#40
“So wise so young, they say, do never live long.” – Richard, ‘
Richard III’
#41
“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
#42
“Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.” – Polonius, ‘Hamlet’
#43
“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” – King Henry IV, ‘Henry IV’
#44
“No legacy is so rich as honesty.” – Mariana, ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’
#45
“In time we hate that which we often fear.” – Charmian, ‘Antony and Cleopatra’
#46
“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
#47
“One may smile, and smile, be a villain.”
#48
“Conscience doth make cowards of us all.” – “Hamlet”
#49
“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-ey’d monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” – Iago, “The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice”
#50
“If we are true to ourselves, we can not be false to anyone.” – ‘Hamlet’
#51
“Be great in act, as you have been in thought.” – ‘The Life and Death of King John’
#52
“Many a true word hath been spoken in jest.” – ‘King Lear’
#53
“Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.” – Dauphin, ‘Henry V’
#54
“My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are infinite.” – Juliet, ‘Romeo and Juliet’
#55
“They do not love that do not show their love.” – Julia, ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’
#56
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” – ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
#57
“Love is too young to know what conscience is.” – “Sonnet 151”
#58
“Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.” – Romeo, ‘Romeo and Juliet’
#59
“For which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?” – Bene, ‘Much Ado about Nothing’
#60
“Love comforteth like sunshine after rain.” – “Venus and Adonis”
#61
“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this and this gives life to thee.” – ‘ Sonnet 18’
#62
“Love is merely a madness.” – Rosalind, ‘As You Like It’
#63
“How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath to say to me that thou art out of breath?” – Juliet, ‘Romeo and Juliet’
#64
“God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.” – Hamlet, “Hamlet”
#65
“Life is as tedious as twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.” – ‘King John’
#66
“O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil.” – Othello, “The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice”
#67
“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” – Puck “Midsummer Night’s Dream”
#68
“I will praise any man that will praise me.” – ‘Antony and Cleopatra’
#69
“There’s many a man has more hair than wit.”
#70
“Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”
#71
“I am not bound to please thee with my answer.”
#72
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
#73
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
#74
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
#75
“Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.”
#76
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
#77
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”
#78
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
#79
“These violent delights have violent ends.”
#80
“I must be cruel only to be kind;
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.”
#81
“Things without all remedy should be without regard: what’s done is done.”
#82
“Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”
#83
“Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.”
#84
“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”
#85
“How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?”
#86
“What’s done can’t be undone.”
#87
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.” – Richard II, ‘Richard II’
#88
“The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief.” – The Duke, ‘Othello’
#89
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” – Ulysses, ‘Troilus and Cressida’
#90
“Sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.”
#91
“Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” – Polonius, ‘Hamlet’
#92
“I bear a charmed life.” – Macbeth, ‘Macbeth’
#93
“Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself.”
#94
“Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.”
#95
“When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.” – “Richard II”
#96
“And oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by the excuse.” – “The plays and poems of William Shakspeare”
#97
“Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.” – Othello, “The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice”
#98
“Expectation is the root of all heartache.” – “All’s Well That Ends Well”
#99
“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.”
#100
“Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.”
#101
“Et tu, Brute?” – Julius Caesar, “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar”
#102
“The Devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape.” – “Hamlet”
#103
“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.” – “Sonnet 98”
#104
“The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?”
#105
“Men should be what they seem.” – Iago, “The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice”
#106
“I would not wish any companion in the world but you.”
#107
“I am one who loved not wisely but too well.” – Othello, “The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice”
#108
“A young woman in love always looks like patience on a monument smiling at grief.” – “Twelfth Night”
#109
“Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. Then your love would also change.” – Juliet, “Romeo and Juliet”
#110
“And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.”
#111
“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.” – “Romeo and Juliet”
#112
“In black ink my love may still shine bright.” – “Sonnet 65”
#113
“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.” – “Sonnet 116”
#114
“See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O, that I were a glove upon that hand that I might touch that cheek!” – Romeo, “Romeo and Juliet”
#115
“Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow.”
#116
“For you, in my respect, are all the world.” – Helena, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
#117
“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.” – ‘Sonnet 116’
#118
“I wish my horse had the speed of your tongue.” – Benedick, “Much ado about nothing”
#119
“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”
#120
“My pride fell with my fortunes.”
#121
“Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.”
#122
“Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?”
#123
“I dote on his very absence.”
#124
“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.”
#125
“All’s well that ends well.”
#126
“Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.”
#127
“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.”
#128
“Nothing can come of nothing.”
#129
“What is past is prologue.”
#130
“Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast.”
#131
“Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.”
#132
“Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise.”
#133
“Words without thoughts never to heaven go.”
#134
“All that glisters is not gold.”
#135
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”
#136
“For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”
#137
“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”
#138
“Doubt thou the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.”
#139
“I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.”
#140
“Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love.”
#141
“If music be the food of love, play on.” – Orsino, “Twelfth Night”
#142
“Go to your bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.”
#143
“Speak low, if you speak love.”
#144
“He that loves to be flattered is worthy o’ the flatterer.”
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