Top Shakespeare Quotes

Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare than it seems to matter to us.

I began with the desire to speak with the dead.

I’m having my lunch when I hear a familiar hoarse shout, ‘Oy Tony!’ I whip round, damaging my neck further, to see Michael Gambon in the lunch queue. …Gambon tells me the story of Olivier auditioning...

Life... is a paradise to what we fear of death.

The king stood in a pool of blue light, unmoored.

These violent delights have violent endsAnd in their triump die, like fire and powderWhich, as they kiss, consume

They lie deadly that tell you have good faces.

For thy sweet love remembr'd such wealth bringsThat then, I scorn to change my state with kings.

I have good reason to be content,for thank God I can read andperhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths.

O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace.

For this new-married man approaching here,Whose salt imagination yet hath wrong'dYour well defended honour, you must pardonFor Mariana's sake: but as he adjudged your brother,--Being criminal, in doub...

Ambition should be made from sterner stuff.

If Shakespeare be considered as a MAN born in a rude age and educated in the lowest manner, without any instruction either from the world or from books, he may be regarded as a prodigy; if represented...

The curse of true love never did run smooth.

No one yet has managed to be post-Shakespearean.

Actors are so fortunate. They can choose whether they will appear in tragedy or in comedy, whether they will suffer or make merry, laugh or shed tears. But in real life it is different. Most men and w...

Alack, there lies more peril in thine eyeThan twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet,And I am proof against their enmity.

But Kate, dost thou understand thus much English? Canst thou love me?Catherine: I cannot tell.Henry: Can any of your neighbours tell, Kate? I'll ask them.

Can you blame me, my dear, for looking on this attachment as a romantic folly inspired by that cursed Shakespeare who will poke his nose where he is not wanted?

For I am born to tame you, Kate,And bring you from a wild Kate to a KateComfortable as other household Kates.