“Good words are better than bad strokes.”
“Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,
Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affection,
Figures pedantical--these summer flies
Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.”
“Would I were dead, if God's good will were so,
For what is in this world but grief and woe?”
Source: The works of Shakespeare
“What is aught but as 'tis valued?”
Source: Troilus and Cressida: Third Series, Revised Edition
“I would that I were low laid in my grave.
I am not worth this coil that's made for me.”
Source: Histories of Shakespeare in Plain and Simple English (a Modern Translation and the Original Version)
“I am declined
Into the vale of years.”
“For youth no less becomes
The light and careless livery that it wears,
Than settled age his sables, and his weeds
Importing health and graveness.”
“The spirit of a youth
That means to be of note, begins betimes.”
Source: The Wisdom and Genius of Shakspeare; ... with ... Notes, and Scriptural References ... by the Rev. T. Price. ... Second Edition, Enlarged
“God defend the right.”
Source: The Works: The Text Formed from an Entirely New Collation of the Old Editions: with the Various Readings, Notes, a Life of the Poet, and a History of the Early English Stage
“They that touch pitch will be defiled.”
Source: The Works of William Shakespeare: Much ado about nothing. Love's labour's lost. 1855
“Love's mind of judgment rarely hath a taste:
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.”
“Good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow.”
“All is well ended, if the suit be won.”
“We must every one be a man of his own fancy.”
Source: The Shakespearian Dictionary, Forming a General Index to All the Popular Expressions, and Most Striking Passages in the Works of Shakespeare, from a Few Words to Fifty Or More Lines ... By T. Dolby
“Our rash faults
Make trivial price of serious thing we have,
Not knowing them until we know their grave.”
Source: The New Shaksperian Dictionary of Quotations: (With Marginal Classification and Reference.)
“The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.”
Source: The plays and poems of William Shakspeare
“What our contempts do often hurl from us,
We wish it ours again.”
Source: The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare: With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators
“Some innocents 'scape not the thunderbolt.”
Source: The Tragedie of Antonie and Cleopatra
“Omittance is no quittance.”
Source: Scene-speare! : Shakespearean Scenes for Student Actors
“Think'st thou it honourable for a noble man
Still to remember wrongs?”
Source: Coriolanus
“For there's no motion
That tends to vice in man, but I affirm
It is the woman's part.”
Source: The plays of William Shakespeare: in twenty-one volumes, with the corrections and illustrations of various commentators, to which are added notes
“The sweat of industry would dry and die,
But for the end it works to.”
Source: Shakespeare's tragedy of Cymbeline, with notes critical and explanatory by J. Hunter
“Some falls the means are happier to rise.”
“To persevere
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness: 'tis unmanly grief.”
“And in the morn and liquid dew of youth,
Contagious blastments are are most imminent.”
“Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel.”
“Let the galled jade wince; our withers are unwrung.”
“So get the start of the majestic world
And bear the palm alone.”
“Those, that with haste will make a mighty fire,
Begin it with weak straws.”
Source: The Works of William Shakspeare...: Collated Verbatim with the Most Authentic Copies, and Revised, with the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators
“Wisely, I say, I am a bachelor.”
Source: Shilling annotated Plays of Shakspeare for Students: Each Play with Explanatory and Illustrative Notes Critical Remarks and other Aids to a thorough understanding of the Drama. Edited for the use of Schools and Students preparing for Examination By the Rev. John Hunter
“If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries,
I would give no man a reason upon compulsion.”
“A man I am cross'd with adversity.”
Source: The Works of William Shakspeare...: Collated Verbatim with the Most Authentic Copies, and Revised, with the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators
“Ambition, the soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than gain which darkens him.”
Source: Plays of William Shakespeare
“My love is strengthen'd, though more weak in seeming; I love not less, though less the show appear: That love is merchandised whose rich esteeming The owner's tongue doth publish every where.”
Source: The Works of William Shakspeare
“Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death the memory be green.”
“In sweet music is such art: killing care and grief of heart fall asleep, or hearing, die.”
“A very little thief of occasion will rob you of a great deal of patience.”
Source: Coriolanus: Second Series
“Patience is sottish, and impatience does become a dog that's mad.”
Source: The New Shaksperian Dictionary of Quotations: (With Marginal Classification and Reference.)
“Do not banish reason for inequality; but let your reason serve to make the truth appear where it seems hid, and hide the false seems true.”
Source: The plays and poems of William Shakspeare
“Many that are not mad have, sure, more lack of reason.”
Source: The Works of William Shakspeare...: Collated Verbatim with the Most Authentic Copies, and Revised, with the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators
“Corruption wins not more than honesty. Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, To silence envious tongues.”
“Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art, As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel; For well thou know'st to my dear doting heart Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel.”
Source: The Pictorial edition of the works of Shakspere, ed. by C. Knight. [8 vols., including a vol. entitled William Shakspere, by C. Knight].
“The instruments of darkness tell us truths.”
“Thine eyes I love, and they as pitying me, Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain, Have put on black, and loving mourners be, Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain.”
Source: Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, and Poems
“O call not me to justify the wrong, That thy unkindness lays upon my heart, Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue, Use power with power, and slay me not by art.”
Source: The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare: Venus and Adonis. The rape of Lucrece. Sonnets. The passionate pilgrim. A lover's complaint. Titus Andronicus. Romeus and Juliet. Appendix, glossarial index. Vol. 10
“Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan For that deep wound it gives my friend and me; Is't not enough to torture me alone, But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be?”
Source: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare In Plain and Simple English
“So now I have confessed that he is thine, And I my self am mortgaged to thy will, My self I'll forfeit, so that other mine, Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still.”
Source: The New Oxford Shakespeare: Modern Critical Edition: The Complete Works
“Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now.”
Source: Shakespeare’s Sonnets: The Problems Solved
“Tired with all these for restful death I cry, As to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimmed in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn.”
“If there be devils, would I were a devil, To live and burn in everlasting fire, So I might have your company in hell, But to torment you with my bitter tongue!”
Source: The Plays of William Shakspeare Accurately Printed from the Text of the Corrected Copies, Left by the Late George Steevens, Esq. and Edmond Malone, Esq
