How stand I, then,That have a father killed, a mother stained,Excitements of my reason and my blood,And let all sleep, while to my shame I seeThe imminent death of twenty thousand menThat for a fantasy...

O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!” – Cassio (Act II, Scene iii)

This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other...

Well said, old mole!

Hang there like a fruit, my soul, Till the tree die!-Posthumus LeonatusAct V, Scene V

Brevity is the soul of wit.

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

I am evenThe natural fool of fortune.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark...

Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full...

If [God] send me no husband, for the which blessing I am at him upon my knees every morning and evening …

This world’s a city full of straying streets, and death’s the market-place where each one meets.

A lover goes toward his beloved as enthusiastically as a schoolboy leaving his books, but when he leaves his girlfriend, he feels as miserable as the schoolboy on his way to school. (Act 2, scene...

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

Knowing I lov’d my books, he furnish’d me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.

Fortune, that arrant whore,Ne’er turns the key to th’poor.

There’s little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps; and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamt of...

Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think,Few come within the compass of my curse,—Wherein I did not some notorious ill,As kill a man, or else...

Sir, he hath not fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; He hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink; his intellect is not replenished; he is only...

What a piece of work is man!

Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.

For sorrow ends not, when it seemeth done.

My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.

(…) cayó en la melancolía, luego en la inapetencia, de allí en el insomnio, de éste en el abatimiento, más tarde en el delirio y, por esta fatal pendiente, en la locura, que ahora le...

But virtue, as it never will be moved,Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,So lust, though to a radiant angel linked,Will sate itself in a celestial bedAnd prey on garbage.

Nothing in his life became him like leaving it.

Dispute not with her: she is lunatic.

They lie deadly that tell you have good faces.

Weigh oath with oath, and you will nothing weigh,Your vows to her and me, put in two scales,Will even weigh, and both as light as tales.

More grief to hide than hate to utter love. Polonius, Hamlet.

My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go

Absence doth sharpen love, presence strengthens it; the one brings fuel, the other blows it till it burns clear.

O serpent heart hid with a flowering face!Did ever a dragon keep so fair a cave?Beautiful tyrant, feind angelical, dove feather raven, wolvish-ravening lamb! Despised substance of devinest show, just opposite to what thou justly...

LEAR: …yet you see how this world goes.GLOS.: I see it feelingly.

The rest, is silence.

And worse I may be yet: the worst is notSo long as we can say ‘This is the worst.

O teach me how I should forget to think (1.1.224)

Of all base passions fear is most accurs’d.

She will outstrip all praise and make it halt behind her.

Lucentio: I read that I profess, the Art of Love.Bianca: And may you prove, sir, master of your art!Lucentio: While you, sweet dear, prove mistress of my heart!

I wish you all the joy that you can wish.

Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it.

..What our contempt often hurls from us,We wish it our again; the present pleasure,By revolution lowering,does becomeThe opposite of itself..

Ay,sir;to be honest,as this world goes,is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

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 double violationOf sacred chastity and of promise-breachThereon dependent,...

What’s in a name?

Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!O any thing, of nothing first create!O heavy lightness, serious vanity,Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,Still-waking sleep, that is not what...

A peevish self-willed harlotry it is.*She’s a stubborn little brat.*

When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.