Quotes from William Shakespeare, page 3 of 22

TITUS: Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones,
Who though they cannot answer my distress,
Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes,
For that they will not intercept my tale:
When I do weep they humbly at my feet
Receive my tears and seem to weep with me.

Titus Andronicus, III, i

TITUS: Rome could afford no tribune like to these.
A stone is soft as wax, tribunes more hard than stones:
A stone is silent, and offendeth not,
And tribunes with their tongues doom men to death.

Titus Andronicus, III, i

TITUS: Why, foolish Lucius, dost thou not perceive
That Rome is but a wilderness of tigers?
Tigers must prey, and Rome affords no prey
But me and mine.

Titus Andronicus, III, i

TITUS: What fool hath added water to the sea,
Or brought a faggot to bright-burning Troy?
My grief was at the height before thou camest,
And now like Nilus, it disdaineth bounds.

Titus Andronicus, III, i

TITUS: It was my deer; and he that wounded her
Hath hurt me more than had he killed me dead.

Titus Andronicus, III, i

TITUS: For now I stand as one upon a rock
Environed with a wilderness of sea,
Who marks the waxing tide grow wave by wave,
Expecting ever when some envious surge
Will in his brinish bowels swallow him.

Titus Andronicus, III, i

MARCUS: O brother, speak with possibilities,
And do not break into these deep extremes.

Titus Andronicus, III, i

TITUS: If there were reason for these miseries,
Then into limits could I bind my woes.

Titus Andronicus, III, i

TITUS: Thou shalt not sigh, nor hold thy stumps to heaven,
Nor wink, nor nod, nor kneel, nor make a sign,
But I of these will wrest an alphabet
And by still practise learn to know thy meaning.

Titus Andronicus, III, ii

MARCUS: Alas, my lord, I have but kill'd a fly.

TITUS: But how, if that fly had a father and mother?
How would he hang his slender gilded wings,
And buzz lamenting doings in the air!

Titus Andronicus, III, ii

MARCUS: O, why should nature build so foul a den,
Unless the gods delight in tragedies?

Titus Andronicus, IV, i

AARON: Pray to the devils; the gods have given us over.

Titus Andronicus, IV, ii

CHIRON: Thou hast undone our mother.

AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.

Titus Andronicus, IV, ii

AARON: Coal-black is better than another hue,
In that it scorns to bear another hue;
For all the water in the ocean
Can never turn the swan's black legs to white,
Although she lave them hourly in the flood.

Titus Andronicus, IV, ii

LUCIUS: Art thou not sorry for these heinous deeds?

AARON: Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.

Titus Andronicus, V, i

AARON: Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,
And set them upright at their dear friends' doors,
Even when their sorrows almost were forgot;
And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,
Have with my knife carved in Roman letters,
'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'

Titus Andronicus, V, i

LUCIUS: As for that ravenous tiger, Tamora,
No funeral rite, nor man in mourning weed,
No mournful bell shall ring her burial;
But throw her forth to beasts and birds to prey.
Her life was beastly and devoid of pity;
And, being dead, let birds on her take pity.

Titus Andronicus, V, iii

KING: Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives,
Live register'd upon our brazen tombs
And then grace us in the disgrace of death;
When, spite of cormorant devouring Time,
The endeavor of this present breath may buy
That honour which shall bate his scythe's keen edge
And make us heirs of all eternity.

Love's Labor's Lost, I, i

KING: Our court shall be a little Academe,
Still and contemplative in living art.

Love's Labor's Lost, I, i

BEROWNE: What is the end of study? let me know.

KING: Why, that to know, which else we should not know.

BEROWNE: Things hid and barr'd, you mean, from common sense?

KING: Ay, that is study's godlike recompense.

Love's Labor's Lost, I, i

BEROWNE: Come on, then; I will swear to study so,
To know the thing I am forbid to know.

Love's Labor's Lost, I, i

BEROWNE: Small have continual plodders ever won
Save base authority from others' books.

Love's Labor's Lost,

BEROWNE: These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights
That give a name to every fixed star
Have no more profit of their shining nights
Than those that walk and wot not what they are.

Love's Labor's Lost, I, i

BEROWNE: So study evermore is overshot:
While it doth study to have what it would
It doth forget to do the thing it should.

Love's Labor's Lost, I, i

KING: Ay, that there is. Our court, you know, is haunted
A man in all the world's new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain;
One whom the music of his own vain tongue
Doth ravish like enchanting harmony.

Love's Labor's Lost, I, i

COSTARD: When would you have it done, sir?

BEROWNE: This afternoon.

COSTARD: Well, I will do it, sir: fare you well.

BEROWNE: Thou knowest not what it is.

COSTARD: I shall know, sir, when I have done it.

Love's Labor's Lost, III, i

BEROWNE: What, I! I love! I sue! I seek a wife!
A woman, that is like a German clock,
Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,
And never going aright, being a watch,
But being watch'd that it may still go right!

Love's Labor's Lost, III, i

HOLOFERNES: This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions: these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion.

Love's Labor's Lost, IV, ii

HOLOFERNES: A good lustre of conceit in a tuft of earth; fire enough for a flint, pearl enough for a swine. 'Tis pretty; it is well.

Love's Labor's Lost, IV, ii

BEROWNE: From women's eyes this doctrine I derive;
They are the ground, the books, the academes
From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire.

Love's Labor's Lost, IV, iii

BEROWNE: Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.

Love's Labor's Lost, IV, iii

HOLOFERNES: He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.

Love's Labor's Lost, V, i

HOLOFERNES: Via, goodman Dull! Thou hast spoken no word all this while.

DULL: Nor understood none neither, sir.

Love's Labor's Lost, V, i

KATHARINE: He made her melancholy, sad, and heavy;
And so she died: had she been light, like you,
Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit,
She might ha' been a grandam ere she died:
And so may you; for a light heart lives long.

Love's Labor's Lost, V, ii

BEROWNE: This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease,
And utters it again when God doth please.

Love's Labor's Lost, V, ii

PRINCESS: A time, methinks, too short
To make a world-without-end bargain in.

Love's Labor's Lost, V, ii

ROSALINE: A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it.

Love's Labor's Lost, V, ii

ARMADO: The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You that way: we this way.

Love's Labor's Lost, V, ii

LYSANDER: You have her father's love, Demetrius;
Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, I, i

LYSANDER: The course of true love never did run smooth.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, I, i

HERMIA: By all the vows that ever men have broke,
In number more than ever women spoke.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, I, i

HELENA: Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, I, i

FLUTE: Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, I, ii

BOTTOM: I'll speak in a monstrous little voice.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, I, ii

FAIRY: Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough brier,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, II, i

FAIRY: Are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery;
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn;
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm;
Mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm?

A Midsummer Night's Dream, II, i

PUCK: Thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, II, i

OBERON: Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, II, i

TITANIA: Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain,
As in revenge, have suck'd up from the sea
Contagious fogs; which falling in the land
Have every pelting river made so proud
That they have overborne their continents.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, II, i

PUCK: I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, II, i

BOTTOM: A calendar, a calendar! look in the almanac.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, i

PUCK: I'll follow you, I'll lead you about a round,
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier:
Sometime a horse I'll be, sometime a hound,
A hog, a headless bear, sometime a fire;
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn,
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, i

BOTTOM: And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together now-a-days.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, i

PUCK: For briers and thorns at their apparel snatch;
Some sleeves, some hats, from yielders all things catch.